Paul Klee

Painting, Visual Artist

1879 – 1940

 Credit »
40

Who was Paul Klee?

Paul Klee was a painter born in Münchenbuchsee, Switzerland, and is considered to be a Swiss German. His highly individual style was influenced by movements in art that included expressionism, cubism, and surrealism. He was also a student of orientalism. Klee was a natural draftsman who experimented with and eventually got deep into color theory, writing about it extensively; his lectures Writings on Form and Design Theory, published in English as the Paul Klee Notebooks, are held to be as important for modern art as Leonardo da Vinci's A Treatise on Painting for the Renaissance. He and his colleague, the Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky, both taught at the German Bauhaus school of art, design and architecture. His works reflect his dry humour and his sometimes childlike perspective, his personal moods and beliefs, and also his musicality.

Famous Quotes:

  • Genius sits in a glass house -- but in an unbreakable one --conceiving ideas. After giving birth, it falls into madness. Stretches out its hand through the window toward the first person happening by. The demon's claw rips, the iron fist grips. Before, you were a model, mocks the ironic voice between serrated teeth, for me, you are raw material to work on. I throw you against the glass wall, so that you remain stuck there, projected and stuck. (Then come the lovers of art and contemplate the bleeding work from outside. Then come the photographers. New art, it says in the newspaper the following day. The learned journals give it a name that ends in ism.)
  • Nature is garrulous to the point of confusion, let the artist be truly taciturn.
  • Color possesses me. I don't have to pursue it. It will possess me always, I know it. That is the meaning of this happy hour: Color and I are one. I am a painter.
  • One does not lash hat lies at a distance. The foibles that we ridicule must at least be a little bit our own. Only then will the work be a part of our own flesh. The garden must be weeded.
  • He has found his style, when he cannot do otherwise.
  • Beauty is as relative as light and dark. Thus, there exists no beautiful woman, none at all, because you are never certain that a still far more beautiful woman will not appear and completely shame the supposed beauty of the first.
  • The art of mastering life is the prerequisite for all further forms of expression, whether they are paintings, sculptures, tragedies, or musical compositions.
  • When looking at any significant work of art, remember that a more significant one probably has had to be sacrificed.
  • A single day is enough to make us a little larger or, another time, a little smaller.
  • In the final analysis, a drawing simply is no longer a drawing, no matter how self-sufficient its execution may be. It is a symbol, and the more profoundly the imaginary lines of projection meet higher dimensions, the better.

We need you!

Help us build the largest biographies collection on the web!

Born
Dec 18, 1879
Münchenbuchsee
Ethnicity
  • Bavarians
Nationality
  • Germany
Profession
Education
  • Academy of Fine Arts, Munich
    Art
    (1898 - )
Employment
  • Kunstakademie Düsseldorf
    (1931 - 1933)
  • Bauhaus
Died
Jun 29, 1940
Muralto

Submitted
on July 23, 2013

Citation

Use the citation below to add to a bibliography:

Style:MLAChicagoAPA

"Paul Klee." Biographies.net. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 18 Mar. 2024. <https://www.biographies.net/people/en/paul_klee>.

Discuss this Paul Klee biography with the community:

0 Comments

    Browse Biographies.net