Klee. Donald Wigal

      1926: Klee moves with his family so as to teach at the Bauhaus in Dessau.

      1929: Klee works exhibited in Paris, Dresden, and Berlin.

      1931: Klee resigns from the Bauhaus, then teaches at the Düsseldorf Academy of Fine Arts.

      1933: Klee’s work among those called “degenerate” by the Nazis. He is dismissed from the Academy. The Klees return to Bern where they live at his parents’ house.

      1934: Klee works exhibited in London, the first time in England.

      1935: A Klee retrospective exhibition in Bern and Basel. Klee falls seriously ill with what is later diagnosed as scleroderma. His art style changes as he uses thick black lines.

      1937: Seventeen of the Klee’s works confiscated by the Nazis are included in an exhibit of “Degenerate Art.”

      1940: A large exhibition of Klee works in Zurich. Klee dies on 29 June in Muralto-Locarno, Switzerland. Commemorative exhibitions are held in Bern, New York and Basel.

      In a collection of his writings titled The Thinking Eye, Paul Klee once asked his readers to take a “little journey” with him to “the land of Better Understanding.” He was speaking of the technical aspects of art, but the same invitation can be made at the outset of this brief profile of the artist. This book offers a little journey through the highlights of Klee’s fascinating life. It also visits Klee’s art in general, and detours briefly into the fifty-nine representative works of his that are reproduced here. (A complete list of Klee’s 8,926 works is in the Catalogue raisonnè Paul Klee.) The Swiss-born Paul Klee (1879–1940) was one of the most inventive, witty, and imaginative of all artists. He was a master of fantasy, offering thousands of small but impressive works that consistently presented subtle wit and profound insight. His work is rarely mistaken for that of any other artist, yet – unlike many artists who find their niche then repeatedly visit it – each of his paintings has its own identity. He adroitly plays with the viewer’s senses, making his art ambiguous, yet nearly always understated. A major influence on the evolution of modern art, even as modern art in Germany was officially condemned, Klee did not subscribe entirely to any of the many movements of his day.

      In the Quarry

      1913

      Watercolour on paper on cardboard, 22.3 × 35.2 cm.

      Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern.

      Homage to Picasso

      1914

      Oil on cardboard, 38 × 30 cm.

      Private collection.

      Klee (pronounced as ‘clay’) was born in Münchenbuchsee, near Bern, Switzerland, on 18 December, 1879. His father, Hans, was German and a music teacher at the teacher training college at Bern-Hofwyl. Paul’s mother, Ida Marie, received her music education in Stuttgart. His paternal great-grandfather was an organist in Thuringia. His most famous drawing from his earliest childhood is With the Hare, done at age five. While he was young, he also drew “devils”, which he felt “acquired real presence.” Early in his diaries he remembers how the devilish figures frightened him so much that he would run to his parents for comfort.

      Before the Gates of Kairouan

      1914

      Watercolour on paper on cardboard, 20.7 × 31.5 cm.

      Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern.

      Red and White Domes

      1914–1915

      Watercolour on Japanese vellum, 14.6 × 13.7 cm.

      K 20 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein Westfalen, Düsseldorf.

      However, the first signs of young Paul Klee’s artistic temperament were expressed not in visual art, but in music. The family supported the young man’s efforts to master the violin, which he played from age seven in 1886 until he was forced by poor health to give up playing in 1935. Like the great Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780–1867), he would play violin for an hour before each painting session. He likewise drew every day, as did Picasso and Matisse.

      Untitled

      1914

      Watercolour and ink on Ingres paper, 17 × 15.8 cm.

      Kupferstichkabinett, Kunstmuseum, Basel.

      He played violin in chamber groups and in the local municipal orchestra even while he was still in school. However, the group was admittedly unpolished. Pablo Casals (1886–1973), the great Spanish cellist, heard the orchestra play in January, 1905. Afterwards he was reported to have said, in French, that it would be “terrible” to play with the orchestra.

      View of a Harbour at Night

      1917

      Gouache and oil on paper coated with chalk and glue, 21 × 15.5 cm.

      Musée d’art moderne et contemporain,

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