Paul Klee
1879-1940
Paul Klee was a Swiss painter of German nationality. 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.
Klee was born in Münchenbuchsee (near Bern), Switzerland, into a musical. Klee started young at both art and music. Paul studied art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich with Heinrich Knirr and Franz von Stuck. 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 also met Bavarian pianist Lily Stumpf, whom he married; they had one son named Felix Paul.
Klee was one of Die Blaue Vier (Blue Four), with Kandinsky, Feininger, and Von Jawlensky formed in 1923. They lectured and exhibited together in the USA in 1924. Klee influenced the work of Belgian printmaker Rene Carcan.
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. 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.
He died in Muralto, Switzerland, in 1940 without having obtained Swiss citizenship. The Swiss authorities eventually accepted his request six days after his death. When Paul Klee died at age sixty, he left at least 8926 works of art.
A museum dedicated to Paul Klee was built in Bern, Switzerland, by the Italian architect Renzo Piano. It opened in June 2005 and houses a collection of about 4000 works by Paul Klee. Another substantial collection of Klee's works is owned by chemist and playwright Carl Djerassi and displayed at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
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