Paul Klee

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Lore & Background

Paul Klee was born in Münchenbuchsee, Switzerland, the second child of German music teacher Hans Wilhelm Klee and Swiss singer Ida Marie Klee. His family moved to Bern in 1880. At age 7 he received violin classes at the Municipal Music School, and at 11 he was invited to play as an extraordinary member of the Bern Music Association. Despite his parents' wishes for him to become a musician, he decided on visual arts during his teen years, partly out of rebellion and because modern music lacked meaning for him. He began studying art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich in 1898 with Heinrich Knirr and Franz von Stuck, excelling at drawing but feeling he lacked natural color sense. After receiving his Fine Arts degree, he traveled to Italy from October 1901 to May 1902 with friend Hermann Haller, studying master painters in Rome, Florence, Naples and the Amalfi Coast. By 1905 he was developing experimental techniques, including drawing with a needle on a blackened pane of glass, resulting in fifty-seven works including his Portrait of My Father (1906). In 1911 he met Wassily Kandinsky and joined the editorial team of the almanac Der Blaue Reiter. His artistic breakthrough came in 1914 when he visited Tunisia with August Macke and Louis Moilliet; he wrote, '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.'

Reader's Guide

Klee's significance lies in his synthesis of expressionism, cubism, and surrealism into a highly individual style, and his systematic exploration of color theory. His lectures Writings on Form and Design Theory, published in English as the Paul Klee Notebooks, are considered as important for modern art as Leonardo da Vinci's A Treatise on Painting was for the Renaissance. He taught at the Bauhaus school alongside Wassily Kandinsky. His works reflect his dry humor, childlike perspective, personal moods and beliefs, and his musicality. His artistic breakthrough came in 1914 during a trip to Tunisia, where he was impressed by the quality of the light and realized color had taken possession of him forever. After returning home, he painted his first pure abstract, In the Style of Kairouan (1914), composed of colored rectangles and a few circles. The colored rectangle became his basic building block, which he combined to create color harmony analogous to a musical composition. Klee's legacy endures through his influence on modern art, his theoretical contributions, and his ability to merge drawing with the realm of color.

Did You Know?

• Klee was so talented on violin that at age 11 he received an invitation to play as an extraordinary member of the Bern Music Association.
• He kept a diary from around 1897 until 1918, which has provided scholars with valuable insight into his life and thinking.
• In 1905 he developed an experimental technique of drawing with a needle on a blackened pane of glass, producing fifty-seven works including Portrait of My Father (1906).
• Klee's first solo exhibition was in Bern in 1910, which then travelled to three Swiss cities.
• He wrote after his 1914 trip to Tunisia: '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.'