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Paul Klee(1879 - 1940)'s works |
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| Biography: |
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Paul Klee
(1879 - 1940)
Paul Klee was born on 18 December 1879 near Bern in Switzerland into the family of Hans Klee, a music teacher, and his wife Maria Frick, also a musician. As a boy Paul learned to play violin. As well as his training in music, he received a thorough classical education in the Literarschule in Bern. Ancient Greek, modern French, classic and contemporary French and German art, and literature were his favorites. Klee graduated from the school in 1898. Through his later schooldays he hesitated between music and art for a career, finally choosing art and the Munich Academy, where he would study it.
Klee arrived in Munich in October 1898 and at first studied privately. The next year he entered the Academy, where he spent 2 years. Feeling unsatisfied with his academic education, Klee left the Academy and traveled in Italy from October 1901 to May 1902. His early work was almost exclusively pen-and-ink drawings and etchings, many of them satirical. He showed his work in different exhibitions and joined a Swiss graphic artists' society. In 1905 he made his first visit to Paris.
In 1906, Klee married the pianist Lily Stumpf and they settled in Munich, then an important center of avant-garde art. In 1910-11 Klee had his first major exhibitions in the 3 cities of Switzerland: Bern, Zurich, and Basel. In 1912, he contributed 17 graphic works to the second exhibition of Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider), the avant-garde artistic society founded by W. Kandinsky and Franz Marc. That same year Klee visited Robert Delaunay in Paris. The latter¡¯s influence on Klee¡¯s development is considered the strongest outside his immediate circle of avant-garde Munich painters. Klee¡¯s translation of Delaunay's essay "On Light" appeared in the Sturm in January 1913.
In April 1914 he and fellow painters Macke and Louis Molliet visited Tunisia. However, he interrupted the voyage abruptly and returned home, feeling that he had ¡°suddenly grasped the idea of light and was a painter now¡±.
During the First World War, Klee was not immediately conscripted, but in March 1916 he was called up for infantry training and then attached to an air force unit where he repaired damaged aircraft, painting their numbers and insignia. Though Klee had few opportunities for artistic work, he managed to do some painting on aircraft canvas. In 1918 he returned to Munich. The avant-garde circle in Munich had been dispersed - Macke and Franz Marc had been killed while Kandinsky had returned to Russia. Klee stayed in Munich alone and continued to develop his ideas.
In November 1920 Klee was invited to teach at the Bauhaus at Weimar, where his friend W. Kandinsky would also become a faculty member in 1922. Bauhaus was an innovative school aiming at uniting fine and applied arts and architecture i.... |
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