Paul Klee

Paul Klee (December 18, 1879 to June 29, 1940) was a Swiss-German painter. He was influenced by many different art styles in his work, including expressionism, cubism and surrealism. He and his friend, the Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky, were also famous for teaching at the Bauhaus school of art and architecture.

Life and Work

Klee (pronounced kle:) was born in Münchenbuchsee (near Bern), Switzerland, into a musical family - his father, Hans Klee, was a German music teacher at the Hofwil Teacher Seminar near Berne. Klee was started young at both art and music. At age 7 he started playing the violin, and at age 8, he was given a box of chalk from his Grandmother and was encouraged to draw frequently with it. Paul could have done either as an adult; in his early years, he had wanted to be a musician, but he later decided on the visual arts during his teen years. He studied art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich with Heinrich Knirr and Franz von Stuck. After travelling to Italy and then back to Berne, he settled in Munich, where he met Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc, and other avant-garde figures, and became associated with Der Blaue Reiter. Here he met Bavarian pianist Lily Stumpf, whom he married; they had one son.

In 1914, he visited Tunisia with August Macke and Louis Moilliet, and was impressed by the quality of the light there, writing "Color has taken possession of me; no longer do I have to chase after it, I know that it has hold of me forever ... Color and I are one. I am a painter." Klee also visited Italy (1901), and Egypt (1928), both of which greatly influenced his art. Klee influenced the work of other noted artists of the early 20th century including Belgian printmaker Rene Carcan.

Klee worked with many different types of media – oil paint, watercolor, ink, and more. He often combined them into one work. He has been variously associated with expressionism, cubism and surrealism but his pictures are difficult to classify. They often have a fragile child-like quality to them, and are usually on a small scale. They frequently allude to poetry, music and dreams and sometimes include words or musical notation. The later works are distinguished by spidery hieroglyph-like symbols. His better known works include Southern (Tunisian) Gardens (1919), Ad Parnassum (1932), and Embrace (1939).

Following World War I, in which he painted camouflage on airplanes for the imperial German army, Klee taught at the Bauhaus, and from 1931 at the Düsseldorf Academy, before being denounced by the Nazi Party for producing "degenerate art" in 1933. The degenerate art exhibit catalogues had even called Klee's work "the work of a sick mind".

Composer Gunther Schuller also immortalized seven works of Klee's in his Seven Studies on Themes of Paul Klee. The studies are based on a range of works, including Alter Klang Harmonies, Abstraktes Terzett Trio, Little Blue Devil, Twittering Machine, Arab Village, Ein unheimlicher Moment Eerie Moment, and Pastorale.

Another of Klee's paintings, Angelus Novus, was the object of an interpretive text by German philosopher and literary critic Walter Benjamin: In it, Benjamin suggests that the angel depicted in the painting might be seen as representing progress in history. In 1933, Paul Klee returned to Switzerland; in 1935, he began experiencing the symptoms of what was diagnosed as scleroderma after his death. The progression of his disease can be followed through the art he created in his last years.

He died in Muralto, Switzerland, in 1940 without having obtained the Swiss citizenship. When Paul Klee died at age sixty, he left at least 8926 works of art. The words on his tombstone say; "I belong not only to this life. I live well with the dead, as with those not born. Nearer to the heart of creation that others. But still too far." Today, a painting by Paul Klee can sell for as much as US$7.5 million. A museum dedicated to Paul Klee was built in Berne, Switzerland, by the Italian architect Renzo Piano. It opened in June 2005. It houses a collection of about 4000 works by Paul Klee.

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Life and Work

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