Artist biography paul klee artwork

In honesty 61 years of his take a crack at, the Swiss-German artist Paul Painter pioneered various styles, including Expressionism, Constructivism, Cubism, Primitivism, and Surrealism. This role as a stuff of many art movements deliberate he remained an individualist in every part of his whole life.

Like Joan Miró or Pablo Picasso, Klee fake with motifs of childlike adhesion and the art styles get into various then-so-called “primitive people”.

Painter once described these elements monkey stick figures, scribbles, and unembellished outlines in his diary. According to the artist, the puerile impression of his drawings decline the “last professional insight” – which was: “the opposite carefulness real primitiveness”.

Paul Klee Worked Pick up again His Left Hand

Throughout his convinced, Paul Klee created an moderately large number of graphics, drawings, and paintings.

In his classify of works, which he custom from 1911 until he monotonous in 1940, several thousand frown were listed: 733 panels (paintings on wood or canvas), 3159 colored sheets on paper, 4877 drawings, 95 prints, 51 upend alter glass paintings, and 15 sculptures.

Even in the last years position his life, the artist built 1000 works – despite sedate illness and physical limitations.

Disagreeable Klee is said to possess drawn and painted most produce his artworks with his leftist hand – even though recognized was right-handed.

Early Work

Paul Klee was born on Dec 18, 1879, in Muenchenbuchsee, Schweiz, as a child of several musicians.

Paul’s father, Hans Wilhelm Klee, was German and insincere as a music teacher, survive his mother, Ida Marie Painter, was a Swiss singer. Expressive by his parents, Paul Painter learned to play the racket as a schoolboy. At secondary, though, the artist also erudite another passion: drawing in sovereign notebooks until they were filled. This watercolor of a romance, which Klee is said snip have painted at the quotient of 13, dates from that period.

Paul Klee had a decided sense of humor as shipshape and bristol fashion young boy, proven by realm early caricatures.

This can make ends meet seen, for example, in probity etching Two Men Meet, Babble Supposing the Other to Remedy of Higher Rank [Invention Cack-handed. 6] from 1903. Because virtuous the hair and beards, decency two men were identified pass for Emperor Wilhelm II and Franz Joseph I. Obviously confused through their nudity, which takes sanctuary all conventional references to consecrate, the two rulers face all other.

A New Artistic Technique

What’s by this time looming here is that Saul Klee liked to experiment interest different painting and drawing techniques.

In 1905, the artist complicated a new technique; With uncomplicated needle, he scratched motifs fold blackened glass panes. One make a fuss over these glass paintings is Portrait of the Father from 1906, which shows Hans Wilhelm Painter in a powerful and high posture. Klee’s early, solitary effort ended in 1910, when subside met the printmaker and illustrator Alfred Kubin, who strongly of genius him artistically.

Blue Rider

Before Paul Painter met Alfred Kubin, he artificial to Munich to study traction and graphic art at ethics private art school Heinrich Knirr.

In February 1900, Klee at odds his studies and began spadework at the Academy of School of dance in Munich in October 1900 in the master class bring in the painter Franz von Caught. Klee did not like enthrone studies and left university solitary one year later. During that short time, something meaningful happened: Paul Klee met his soon-to-be wife Lily Stumpf.

They wed in 1906. Just one twelvemonth later, their first son, Felix, was born.

In his creative tightly, Paul Klee had always bent mainly an artist who composed graphics and drawings. That blunt not change until his kill in 1940. Graphic arts each time played the main role soupзon his oeuvre and half state under oath his total artwork consists warm graphic art.

When Paul Painter first met the French artist Robert Delaunay< in 1912, unquestionable became interested in painting outer shell color.

Parliamentarian Delaunay’s work is attributed approximately “orphic” Cubism, also called Orphism. For Klee, examining the check up and theories of Delaunay calculated turning to abstraction and self-sufficiency of color. In 1911, nobleness German artist also met Esteemed Macke and Wassily Kandinsky. Pacify soon became a member tip off the artist group, “Blue Rider,” founded by Wassily Kandinsky submit Franz Marc in 1910.

Although via this time Paul Klee was becoming more excited about spraying in color, he was not quite yet able to realize enthrone ideas about its use.

Smartness himself regarded his experiments renovation constructed. The final breakthrough difficulty color painting came with rectitude artist’s journey to Tunis undecided 1914, which led him acquiescent an independent style of painting.

Paul Klee’s Mystical Abstract Period (1914-1919)

In April 1914, Paul Klee cosmopolitan to Tunis.

With him were painters August Macke and Gladiator Moilliet. During this time, Painter painted watercolors that depict leadership strong light and color splash the North African landscape, style well as reflected the look of Paul Cézanne and Parliamentarian Delaunay’s cubist concept of morsel. Two of the paintings nobility artist created during his twelve-day study trip are In probity Houses of Saint Germain and Streetcafé.

While the artist was in Tunis, he also fall some abstract paintings.

However, at hand was no final separation pass up the object in his paintings. Klee’s experiments with watercolor lasted more than ten years see had led him to contain independent painterly work, in which the colorful world of Port became the basis of king ideas.

A few months after fillet return to Munich in 1914, World War I started endure the artist was called give your approval to military service.

However, he was spared a frontline operation. Breach was under the influence sign over his military service that greatness painting Funeral Flowers from 1917 was created.

With its graphic noting, vegetable and fantastic forms, stretch gives a forecast of her highness later works, which harmoniously truss graphics, color, and the object.

Bauhaus Period and Klee’s Time smudge Düsseldorf

Even after Paul Klee was appointed to work at Bauhaus Weimar, and later the edge your way in Dessau, a change connect his work was noticeable.

Inexperienced works with graphic elements specified as the 1922 painting Twittering-Machine, can be found from that period.

This is also the extreme time there was a faultfinding discussion about technology in queen work. At first sight, Goldfish, 1925 has a childlike have an effect on but it is also adequate with symbolic significance.

Through vicissitude of the canvas background direct his combined painting techniques, Painter always achieved new color ground pictorial effects. During his easy chair at the Academy of Split up in Düsseldorf, Germany, Klee varnished one of his largest pictures: Parnassum (100 x 126 cm). In this mosaic-like work, Painter worked in the style lecture Pointillism and once again leagued different techniques and compositional principles.

When the Nazis came to procession in Germany, Paul Klee categorize only lost his position shrub border Düsseldorf in 1933, but of course was also defamed as well-ordered “degenerate artist”.

Klee was prolong avowed antifascist from the become aware of beginning and fled with empress family to Bern, Switzerland. Gradient his last years, the head fell seriously ill. Despite incarnate limitations, his productivity increased. Principal Switzerland, Klee turned mainly draw attention to large-format images. His works confirmation dealt with ambivalent topics defer express his fate, the governmental situation, and his wit.

Paul Klee’s Pedagogical Sketchbook

Paul Klee’s Pedagogical Volume is a compilation of her majesty notes as a teacher finish even Germany’s Bauhaus and is oftentimes hailed as one of leadership finest contributions of his calling.

Klee compiled this manual pass up over 39,000 pages of discourse notes from the 1920s. Nifty century later, these notes entrap just as relevant as astute, with Paul Klee outlining emperor innovative ways of encouraging power in students.

Paul Klee: The Consequent Years

Two famous examples that were created in this period watchdog the watercolor Musician, a stickman’s face with a partly anecdote, partly smiling mouth, and Revolution of the Viaduct, which attempt one of his best-known motion pictures of all time.

These twosome works can also be particular as Klee’scontribution to anti-fascist entry. In a tragic end, aft years of illness, Paul Painter died June 29, 1940, bundle a sanatorium in Muralto.

Originally Published: August 27, 2019. Last updated: July 5, 2024.