Paul Klee

Paul Klee (18 December 1879 – 29 June 1940) was a Swiss-born German artist known for a highly personal style shaped by expressionism, cubism, and surrealism. A gifted draftsman, he delved deeply into color theory, conducting experiments and writing extensively on the subject. His lectures, collected as the *Paul Klee Notebooks*, are considered as crucial to modern art as Leonardo da Vinci’s *A Treatise on Painting* was to the Renaissance. Alongside Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky, Klee taught at the Bauhaus school. His artwork often displays a dry wit, a childlike viewpoint, reflections of his moods and beliefs, and a strong musical influence.

Klee was born in Münchenbuchsee, Switzerland, the second child of a German music teacher and a Swiss singer. His father taught at a state seminary near Bern, and both parents encouraged Klee’s musical talents. He began violin lessons at age seven and was skilled enough by eleven to play as an extraordinary member of the Bern Music Association. Though drawing and poetry were also interests, they received less support than music.

Initially, Klee followed his parents’ wish for him to become a musician, but in his teens he turned to visual arts—partly out of rebellion and partly because he felt modern music lacked meaning. He preferred traditional eighteenth- and nineteenth-century music as a performer, but as an artist he wanted the freedom to explore radical ideas. By sixteen, his landscape drawings already showed considerable skill. Around 1897, he began a diary he kept until 1918, which later gave scholars deep insight into his life. He drew constantly in his schoolbooks, especially caricatures, and barely passed his final exams, dryly noting the difficulty of achieving the exact minimum. Besides music and art, he was a voracious reader and later wrote on art theory.

With reluctant parental permission, Klee started art studies in Munich in 1898. He excelled at drawing but felt he lacked natural color sense, even doubting he would ever learn to paint. During this time, he spent much time in pubs and had affairs, fathering an illegitimate son who died weeks after birth. After earning his fine arts degree, he traveled to Italy with a friend from 1901 to 1902, studying past masters. He was overwhelmed by the Forum and Vatican, and though Italy’s colors moved him, he foresaw a long struggle with color. For Klee, color represented optimism and nobility, a relief from the pessimism of his black-and-white grotesques and satires. Returning to Bern, he lived with his parents and took occasional art classes. By 1905, he experimented with techniques like drawing with a needle on blackened glass, producing fifty-seven works including *Portrait of My Father* (1906). He also completed a cycle of eleven zinc-plate etchings called *Inventions*, his first exhibited works, featuring grotesque characters. Still dividing his time with music, he played violin in an orchestra and wrote concert and theater reviews.

Klee married Bavarian pianist Lily Stumpf in 1906; their son Felix Paul was born the following year. They lived in a Munich suburb, where she gave piano lessons and occasional performances while he managed the household and worked on his art. An attempt to become a magazine illustrator failed. His art progressed slowly over the next five years, partly due to domestic duties and partly because he was searching for a new approach. In 1910, he had his first solo exhibition in Bern, which later traveled to three other Swiss cities.