Paul Klee was a Swiss painter, watercolorist, and etcher, considered one of the most original representatives of modern art. Following a specific artistic style, he created a series of works famous for looking like images of fantasy, ingenuity and imagination.
A German citizen, Klee lived most of his life in Switzerland. He was born in Münchenbuchsee, near Bern, Switzerland, on December 18, 1879, but in 1898 he moved to Munich where he studied art at a private school and at the city’s Academy of Fine Arts. His earliest works were pencil landscape studies showing the influence of Impressionism.
Until 1912, he even made black and white etchings, the hints of fantasy and satire in these works show the influence of 20th century expressionism, as well as the master engravers Francisco de Goya, and William Blake.
View of a square (1912) | Description: Gouache and wax crayon on paper attached to cardboard. 16.5 x 26.3 cm. | Location: Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum
Between 1920 and 1931 Klee was a professor at the Bauhaus, Germany’s most avant-garde art school. A trip to Africa in 1914 made him definitely discover color and marked the beginning of his mature style, in which he declared himself possessed by color.
For the next 20 years, his paintings and watercolors showed mastery of dreamy and delicate chromatic harmonies, which he generally used to create simple and semi-abstract compositions or even effects that resemble mosaics, as in Pastoral (1927, Museum of Modern Art from New York).
Still Life with Dice (1923) | Description: Watercolor, wax pencil and ink on paper attached to cardboard. 27 x 38 cm. | Location: Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum
Klee was also a master of drawing and many of them are complicated lines with a content that derives from a fantastic or dreamy imagery, he described the technique of these drawings as taking a line for a walk. In Trembling Machine (1922, Museum of Modern Art, New York), for example, with his fluid, metallic elements, like birds, he created a composition of interconnected linear and circular forms, with an evocative effect far more important than his own work means.
Shaking Machine (1922) | Description: Drawing in oil and watercolor on paper on cardboard. 41.3 x 30.5 cm. | Location: MOMA. NY
Beginning in 1935, affected by a progressive disease, scleroderma, Klee adopted a clear, simple style, characterized by thick lines like charcoal and large areas of nuanced colors. His artistic themes during this period adopted a pessimistic and dramatic tone, as in Death and Fire (1940, Kunstmuseum, Bern, Switzerland).
Ad Parnassum (1932) | Description: Oil on canvas. 100 x 126 cm. | Location: Kunstmuseum, Bern
Paul Klee died in Muralto, Locarno, Switzerland, on June 29, 1940. His work influenced later Surrealists, as well as non-objective artists, and was a fundamental source of inspiration for the birth of Abstract Expressionism.
