Klee, Paul

Klee, Paul (1879-1940), Swiss painter, watercolourist, and etcher, who was one of the most original masters of modern art. Following no specific art movement, he created works known for their fantastic dream images, wit, and imagination.

A German citizen, Klee lived much of his life in Switzerland. He was born in Münchenbuchsee, near Berne, Switzerland, on December 18, 1879, and in 1898 moved to Munich, where he studied art at a private school and at the Munich Academy. His earliest works were pencil landscape studies that showed the influence of Impressionism. Until 1912 he also produced many black-and-white etchings; the overtones of fantasy and satire in these works showed the influence of 20th-century Expressionism as well as of such master printmakers as Francisco Goya and William Blake. Klee was a teacher at the Bauhaus, Germany's most avant-garde art school, from 1920 to 1931.

A trip to North Africa in 1914 strongly stimulated Klee towards using colour and marked the beginning of his fully mature style, in which he declared himself “possessed by colour”. His paintings and watercolours for the next 20 years showed a mastery of delicate, dream-like colour harmonies, which he usually used to create flat, semiabstract compositions or even effects resembling mosaic, as in Pastoral (1927, Museum of Modern Art, New York). Klee was also a master draughtsman, and many of his works are elaborated line drawings with subject matter that grew out of fantasy or dream imagery; he described his technique in these drawings as “taking a line for a walk”. Twittering Machine (1922, Museum of Modern Art), for instance, with its fluid, wiry, bird-like motifs, is a composition of interconnected lines and circular shapes, with an evocative effect that is much greater than its spare means.

After 1935, afflicted by a progressive skin and muscular disease, Klee adopted a broad, flat style characterized by thick, crayon-like lines and large areas of subdued colour. His subject matter during this period grew increasingly brooding and gloomy, as in the nightmarish Death and Fire (1940, Kunstmuseum, Berne, Switzerland).

Klee died in Muralto, Switzerland, on June 29, 1940. His work influenced all later 20th-century Surrealist and non-objective artists and was a prime source for the budding Abstract Expressionist movement. In 2005 the Zentrum Paul Klee, a centre celebrating the life and work of the artist, opened in Bern, Switzerland. Designed by the Italian architect Renzo Piano it contains more than 4,000 of Klee’s works.