Fine Art Presentations

 An e.Gallery for Artists
Klee, Paul [Swiss, 1879-1940] 

Home

Index

Search

Contact

About

Artists

Nationality

Collections

Movements

Centuries

 Navigate: Home → Alphabetical  → Klee Paul  [Link Partners]  [Help]    Help support the e.Gallery!   

Klee, Paul [Swiss, 1879-1940]


[ Biography | 20th Century Artists | Bauhaus Artists | Anthroposophical Artists ]
portrait

A Swiss-born painter and graphic artist whose personal, often gently humorous works are replete with allusions to dreams, music, and poetry, Paul Klee, b. Dec. 18, 1879, d. June 29, 1940, is difficult to classify.

Primitive art, surrealism, cubism, and children's art all seem blended into his small-scale, delicate paintings, watercolors, and drawings. Klee grew up in a musical family and was himself a violinist. After much hesitation he chose to study art, not music, and he attended the Munich Academy in 1900. There his teacher was the popular symbolist and society painter Franz von Stuck. Klee later toured Italy (1901–02), responding enthusiastically to Early Christian and Byzantine art.

Klee's early works are mostly etchings and pen-and-ink drawings. These combine satirical, grotesque, and surreal elements and reveal the influence of Francisco de Goya and James Ensor, both of whom Klee admired. Two of his best-known etchings, dating from 1903, are Virgin in a Tree and Two Men Meet, Each Believing the Other to Be of Higher Rank. Such peculiar, evocative titles are characteristic of Klee and give his works an added dimension of meaning.

After his marriage in 1906 to the pianist Lili Stumpf, Klee settled in Munich, then an important center for avant-garde art. That same year he exhibited his etchings for the first time. His friendship with the painters Wassily Kandinsky and August Macke prompted him to join Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider), an Expressionist group that contributed much to the development of abstract art.

A turning point in Klee's career was his visit to Tunisia with Macke and Louis Molliet in 1914. He was so overwhelmed by the intense light there that 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. That is the significance of this blessed moment. Color and I are one. I am a painter."
He now built up compositions of colored squares that have the radiance of the mosaics he saw on his Italian sojourn. The watercolor Red and White Domes (1914; Collection of Clifford Odets, New York City) is distinctive of this period.

Klee often incorporated letters and numerals into his paintings, as in Once Emerged from the Gray of Night (1917-18; Klee Foundation, Berlin). These, part of Klee's complex language of symbols and signs, are drawn from the unconscious and used to obtain a poetic amalgam of abstraction and reality. He wrote that "Art does not reproduce the visible, it makes visible," and he pursued this goal in a wide range of media using an amazingly inventive battery of techniques. Line and color predominate with Klee, but he also produced series of works that explore mosaic and other effects.

Klee taught at the BAUHAUS school after World War I, where his friend Kandinsky was also a faculty member. In Pedagogical Sketchbook (1925), one of his several important essays on art theory, Klee tried to define and analyze the primary visual elements and the ways in which they could be applied. In 1931 he began teaching at Dusseldorf Academy, but he was dismissed by the Nazis, who termed his work "degenerate." In 1933, Klee went to Switzerland. There he came down with the crippling collagen disease scleroderma, which forced him to develop a simpler style and eventually killed him. The late works, characterized by heavy black lines, are often reflections on death and war, but his last painting, Still Life (1940; Felix Klee collection, Bern), is a serene summation of his life's concerns as a creator.

[*] RS Archive pages at Powell's Books

  Klee, Paul [Swiss, 1879-1940]

bLog Link

More info from ArtCyclopedia 



No Galleries
Previous Level Top Level

(23 Images, Page 1 of 2)
 
Size: 137 KB [thumbnail of embrace.jpg]
Dims: 1037 x 832
Type: JPG
File: embrace.jpg
Title: Embrace
Size: 140 KB [thumbnail of domes.jpg]
Dims: 895 x 944
Type: JPG
File: domes.jpg
Title: Red and White Domes
Size: 86 KB [thumbnail of death_fire.jpg]
Dims: 656 x 689
Type: JPG
File: death_fire.jpg
Title: Death and Fire
Size: 148 KB [thumbnail of parkidol.jpg]
Dims: 748 x 1197
Type: JPG
File: parkidol.jpg
Title: Park with Idols
  
Size: 176 KB [thumbnail of tunisian.jpg]
Dims: 818 x 1077
Type: JPG
File: tunisian.jpg
Title: Tunisian Gardens
  
Size: 32 KB [thumbnail of twitteri.jpg]
Dims: 463 x 636
Type: JPG
File: twitteri.jpg
Title: Twittering Machine (Die Zwitschermaschine)
  
Size: 198 KB [thumbnail of parnadtl.jpg]
Dims: 1032 x 1201
Type: JPG
File: parnadtl.jpg
Title: Ad Parnassum (detail)
  
Size: 148 KB [thumbnail of garden.jpg]
Dims: 851 x 994
Type: JPG
File: garden.jpg
Title: Remembrance of a Garden
  
Size: 139 KB [thumbnail of castle_garden.jpg]
Dims: 577 x 696
Type: JPG
File: castle_garden.jpg
Title: Castle Garden
  
Size: 302 KB [thumbnail of highway.jpg]
Dims: 820 x 1035
Type: JPG
File: highway.jpg
Title: Highways and Byways
  
Size: 214 KB [thumbnail of parnassu.jpg]
Dims: 1144 x 900
Type: JPG
File: parnassu.jpg
Title: Ad Parnassum
Size: 137 KB [thumbnail of ancient.jpg]
Dims: 904 x 937
Type: JPG
File: ancient.jpg
Title: Ancient Sound, Abstract on Black
Size: 223 KB [thumbnail of s_garden.jpg]
Dims: 1011 x 854
Type: JPG
File: s_garden.jpg
Title: Southern Gardens
Size: 143 KB [thumbnail of goldfish.jpg]
Dims: 1084 x 736
Type: JPG
File: goldfish.jpg
Title: The Goldfish
Size: 74 KB [thumbnail of klee_untitled.jpg]
Dims: 596 x 747
Type: JPG
File: klee_untitled.jpg
Title: Untitled (Still Life)
  
(23 Images, Page 1 of 2)
 

RS Bookstore Books Ad
Image 9781855840669.jpgMarkerWorld History and the Mysteries in the ...Marker
by Rudolf Steiner
35.00
Image 9780979623226.jpgMarkerChristmasMarker
by Rudolf Steiner
12.00
Image 9780880106221.jpgMarkerFirst Steps in Christian Religious Rene...Marker
by Rudolf Steiner
30.00
Image 9780880103879.jpgMarkerWaldorf Education and Anthroposophy 1Marker
by Rudolf Steiner
14.95

Some Fine Print: All images, pictures, etc. contained here are gleaned from Usenet, or some other public access archive. We believe all entries to be in the public domain and, therefore, are without restriction for personal use. Should you want to use any image on this site for commercial purposes, you will need to consult with a competent attorney to determine your rights. If you see errors or omissions (e.g., missing artists, artist not cross-referenced by century or ethnicity), or if you own the copyright to an image displayed here, please contact us.


 Fine Art Presentations v1.6a
 Copyright 1990-2024 The e.Lib, Inc.