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Paul Klee: Swiss-born, German artist, 1879 - 1940
On explaining why he barely passed his exams: “After all, it's rather difficult to achieve the exact minimum, and it involves risks.”
— Paul Klee
Early sketches … from YouTube (18 minutes) “Paul Klee the Playful
A Journey Through the Life and Art of a Visionary!" — Art
Genius. History SchoolWhat made Klee choose art over music?
Klee began his creative life as a talented violinist before studying art. For awhile he divided his time between art and music, which his parents preferred.
Of his early artwork, he said, “though I'm fairly satisfied with my etchings, I can't go on like this.
I'm not a specialist.”
By 1905, Klee was developing some experimental techniques, including drawing with a needle on a blackened pane of glass, resulting in fifty-seven works including his Portrait of My Father. — Wikipedia
Portrait of my Father, 1906Perhaps art represented a greater struggle?
“Spatial art does not begin with a poetic mood or idea, but with construction of one or more figures, with the harmonizing of several colors and tones, or with the devaluation of spatial relationships and so on.”
— Paul KleeIn the style of KAIROUAN, 1914, first abstract painting.
War years … from YouTube (18 minutes) “Paul Klee the Playful Genius. A Journey Through the Life and Art of a Visionary!" Art History School
"a long struggle lies in store for me in this field of color."
Once emerged from the gray of night, 1918
Source of poem uncertain … possibly Klee
Once emerged from the gray of night
Heavier and dearer and stronger
Than the fire of the night
Drunk with God and doubled over.
At present ethereal
Surrounded by blue
Soaring over the glaciers
Toward the wise constellations.
On being an artist:
“He neither serves nor rules, he transmits. His position is humble and the beauty at the crown is not his own. He is merely a channel.”
— Paul Klee
Joyce Wycoff, 2024
Klee used shapes like musical notes
“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.”
— Paul Klee
Bavarian Don Giovanni, 1919
“Beauty
is as relative as light and dark. Thus, there exists no beautiful woman, none at all, because you are never certain that a still far more beautiful woman will not appear and completely shame the supposed beauty of the first.”
— Paul KleePerhaps Klee needed more room to explore his curiosity?
“The beholder’s eye, which moves like an animal grazing, follows paths prepared for it in the picture.”— Paul Klee
Temple Gardens, 1920
“Nature
is garrulous to the point of confusion; let the artist be truly taciturn.”
— Paul KleeLanding or the “112”, 1920
Klee taught at the Bauhaus from 1921 through 1931.
“To achieve vital harmony in a picture it must be constructed out of parts in themselves incomplete, brought into harmony only at the last stroke.”
— Paul KleeRevolving House, 1921
JUN
“Art does not reproduce what we see. It makes us see.” — Paul Klee
“Comedy is at the heart of Klee’s work.”
© Joyce Wycoff, 2024
“To emphasize only the beautiful seems to me to be like a mathematical system that only concerns itself with positive numbers.”— Paul Klee
“All is well with me. The rain doesn’t reach me, my room is well heated, what more can one ask for? There’s no shortage of work, either…”
— Paul Klee“diversity, innovation, and depth of meaning”
Senecio, 1922 (aka Head of a Man Going Senile)
In his imaginative doodlings, Klee liked, in his own words, to “take a line for a walk.”
“Art should be like a holiday: something to give a man the opportunity to see things differently and to change his point of view.”
— Paul Klee
Affected Place, 1922
© Joyce Wycoff, 2024
“boundless imagination”
“By using patches of color and tone it is possible to capture every natural impression in the simplest way, freshly and immediately.”— Paul Klee
“You adapt yourself to the contents of the paintbox.”
— Paul Klee“Originally displayed in Germany, the image was declared "degenerate art" by Adolf Hitler in 1933 and sold by the Nazi party to an art dealer in 1939, whence it made its way to New York.
One of the better known of more than 9,000 works produced by Klee, it is among the more famous images of the New York Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). It has inspired several musical compositions and, according to a 1987 magazine profile in New York Magazine, has been a popular piece to hang in children's bedrooms.”
— PaulKlee.net
“According to his son Felix, of the 9,146 works Klee recorded in his oeuvre catalogue, more than 500 refer to the theater, masks, or music.” — MetMuseum.org
Abstract Trio, 1923
“Becoming is superior to being.”
— Paul Klee
One of his aims as an artist, Klee said, was to “make secret visions visible.”
Jardin d’agrément oriental, 1925
© Joyce Wycoff, 2024
1925: first Paris exhibit - a hit with French Surrealists
“He has found his style, when he cannot do otherwise.”
— Paul KleeFish Magic, 1925
JUN 21
“First of all, the art of living; then as my ideal profession, poetry and philosophy, and as my real profession, plastic arts, in the last resort, for lack of income, illustrations.”
— Paul Klee“geometric shapes, intricate patterns, and abstract forms”
Brother and Sister, 1930 … watercolor
“The more horrible this world (as today, for instance), the more abstract our art, whereas a happy world brings forth an art of the here and now.”
— Paul Klee
“Make chance essential.”
— Paul Klee
“harmonious and rhythmic compositions”
“Everything
vanishes around me, and works are born as if out of the void. Ripe, graphic fruits fall off. My hand has become the obedient instrument of a remote will.”
— Paul Klee
on Green, 1930
“Everything passes, and what remains of former times, what remains of life, is the spiritual. In everything we do, the claim of the Absolute is unchanging.”
— Paul Klee
Joyce Wycoff, 2024
considered his masterpiece
“I cannot be grasped in the here and now. For my dwelling place is as much among the dead as the yet unborn. Slightly closer to the heart of creation than usual. But not nearly close enough.”
— Paul Klee
JUN
“All art is a memory of age-old things, dark things, whose fragments live on in the artist.”
— Paul Klee
“often whimsical and introspective”
“I paint in order not to cry.”
— Paul Klee
Insula Dulcamara, 1938
Bei Lu, 1938
“For the understanding of a picture a chair is needed. Why a chair? To prevent the legs, as they tire, from interfering with the mind.”
— Paul Klee
102 works seized by Nazis as “degenerate art”
“Sometimes I dream of a work of really great breadth, ranging through the whole region of object, meaning, and style.
This, I fear, will remain a dream, but it is a good thing to bear the possibility occasionally in mind.”
— Paul KleeOne of his last, this painting is entitled "Erzengel" and is one of Klee's last. His painting depicts heavy black lines representing archangels in front of a faded rainbow-like background.
In case you want to know more about Paul Klee …
On December 18, 2018, his birth day, Google dedicated this doodle to Paul Klee.
More resources:
Paul Klee Wikipedia
Zentrum Paul Klee
Though born in Switzerland, Klee was denied citizenship as his art was considered too revolutionary.
Paul Klee: Psychic Improvisation by David Zwirner
Why Paul Klee was a comic at heart
How to Be an Artist, According to Paul Klee by Sarah Gottesman
December 18, 1879 - June 29, 1940
"Some will not recognize the truthfulness of my mirror. Let them remember that I am not here to reflect the surface... but must penetrate inside. My mirror probes down to the heart.”
— Paul Klee, from his diary
© Joyce Wycoff, 2024