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109-538: Paul Klee ( German: [paʊ̯l ˈkleː] ; 18 December 1879 – 29 June 1940) was a Swiss-born German artist. His highly individual style was influenced by movements in art that included expressionism , cubism , and surrealism . Klee was a natural draftsman who experimented with and eventually deeply explored color theory , writing about it extensively; his lectures Writings on Form and Design Theory ( Schriften zur Form und Gestaltungslehre ), published in English as

218-500: A "Form" master in the bookbinding, stained glass, and mural painting workshops and was provided with two studios. In 1922, Kandinsky joined the staff and resumed his friendship with Klee. Later that year the first Bauhaus exhibition and festival was held, for which Klee created several of the advertising materials. Klee welcomed the many conflicting theories and opinions within the Bauhaus: "I also approve of these forces competing one with

327-571: A 1920 version of the book edited by Kurt Wolff. Around this time, Klee's graphic work increased. His early inclination towards the absurd and the sarcastic was well received by Kubin, who befriended Klee and became one of his first significant collectors. Klee met, through Kubin, the art critic Wilhelm Hausenstein in 1911. Klee was a foundation member and manager of the Munich artists' union Sema that summer. In autumn he made an acquaintance with August Macke and Wassily Kandinsky , and in winter he joined

436-519: A brief period of influence in American theatre, including the early modernist plays by Eugene O'Neill ( The Hairy Ape , The Emperor Jones and The Great God Brown ), Sophie Treadwell ( Machinal ) and Elmer Rice ( The Adding Machine ). Expressionist plays often dramatise the spiritual awakening and sufferings of their protagonists. Some utilise an episodic dramatic structure and are known as Stationendramen (station plays), modeled on

545-891: A catalogue. Critic René Crevel called the artist a "dreamer" who "releases a swarm of small lyrical louses from mysterious abysses." Paul Klee's confidante Will Grohmann argued in the Cahiers d'art that he "stands definitely well solid on his feet. He is by no means a dreamer; he is a modern person, who teaches as a professor at the Bauhaus." Whereupon Breton, as Joan Miró remembers, was critical of Klee: "Masson and I have both discovered Paul Klee. Paul Éluard and Crevel are also interested in Klee, and they have even visited him. But Breton despises him." The art of mentally ill people inspired Klee as well as Kandinsky and Max Ernst, after Hans Prinzhorns book Bildnerei der Geisteskranken (Artistry of

654-452: A color field from individually stamped dots, surrounded by similarly stamped lines, which results in a pyramid. Above the roof of the " Parnassus " there is a sun. The title identifies the picture as the home of Apollo and the Muses . During his 1929 travels through Egypt, Klee developed a sense of connection to the land, described by art historian Olivier Berggruen as a mystical feeling: "In

763-605: A critic by Klee, who shows through denaturation of the birds, that the world technization heist the creatures' self-determination. Other examples from that period are der Goldfisch (The Goldfish) from 1925, Katze und Vogel (Cat and Bird), from 1928, and Hauptweg und Nebenwege (Main Road and Byways) from 1929. Through variations of the canvas ground and his combined painting techniques Klee created new color effects and picture impressions. From 1916 to 1925, Klee created 50 hand puppets for his son Felix. The puppets are not mentioned in

872-536: A cultural pessimism, which can be found at the turn of the 20th century in works by Symbolists . The Invention Nr. 6, the 1903 etching Zwei Männer, einander in höherer Stellung vermutend (Two Men, Supposing the Other to be in a Higher Position), depicts two naked men, presumably emperor Wilhelm II and Franz Joseph I of Austria , recognizable by their hairstyle and beards. As their clothes and insignia were bereft, "both of them have no clue if their conventional salute […]

981-486: A few circles. The colored rectangle became his basic building block, what some scholars associate with a musical note, which Klee combined with other colored blocks to create a color harmony analogous to a musical composition. His selection of a particular color palette emulates a musical key. Sometimes he uses complementary pairs of colors, and other times "dissonant" colors, again reflecting his connection with musicality. A few weeks later, World War I began. At first, Klee

1090-574: A gathering place for a group of Expressionist artists, many of Jewish origin, dubbed the School of Paris . After World War II, figurative expressionism influenced artists and styles around the world. The term is sometimes suggestive of angst . In a historical sense, much older painters such as Matthias Grünewald and El Greco are sometimes termed expressionist, though the term is applied mainly to 20th-century works. The Expressionist emphasis on individual and subjective perspective has been characterized as

1199-405: A green pot, sculpture and an angel. The moon on black ground is separated from these groups. During his 60th birthday Klee was photographed in front of this picture. Art does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible. "Klee's act is very prestigious. In a minimum of one line he can reveal his wisdom. He is everything; profound, gentle and many more of the good things, and this because: he

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1308-514: A magazine illustrator failed. Klee's art work progressed slowly for the next five years, partly from having to divide his time with domestic matters, and partly as he tried to find a new approach to his art. In 1910, he had his first solo exhibition in Bern, which then travelled to three Swiss cities. In January 1911, Alfred Kubin met Klee in Munich and encouraged him to illustrate Voltaire 's Candide . His resultant drawings were published later in

1417-451: A musician; but he decided on the visual arts during his teen years, partly out of rebellion and partly because modern music lacked meaning for him. He stated, "I didn't find the idea of going in for music creatively particularly attractive in view of the decline in the history of musical achievement." As a musician, he played and felt emotionally bound to traditional works of the eighteenth and nineteenth century, but as an artist he craved

1526-547: A part of the development of functionalism . In Mexico, in 1953, German émigré Mathias Goeritz published the Arquitectura Emocional ("Emotional Architecture") manifesto with which he declared that "architecture's principal function is emotion". Modern Mexican architect Luis Barragán adopted the term that influenced his work. The two of them collaborated in the project Torres de Satélite (1957–58) guided by Goeritz's principles of Arquitectura Emocional . It

1635-588: A reaction against Abstract Expressionism was implicit in it at the start, and is one of its most lineal continuities." The Expressionist movement included other types of culture, including dance, sculpture, cinema and theatre. Exponents of expressionist dance included Mary Wigman , Rudolf von Laban , and Pina Bausch . Some sculptors used the Expressionist style, as for example Ernst Barlach . Other expressionist artists known mainly as painters, such as Erich Heckel , also worked with sculpture. There

1744-578: A reaction to positivism and other artistic styles such as Naturalism and Impressionism . While the word expressionist was used in the modern sense as early as 1850, its origin is sometimes traced to paintings exhibited in 1901 in Paris by obscure artist Julien-Auguste Hervé, which he called Expressionismes . An alternative view is that the term was coined by the Czech art historian Antonin Matějček in 1910 as

1853-407: A specialist." Klee was still dividing his time with music, playing the violin in an orchestra and writing concert and theater reviews. Klee married Bavarian pianist Lily Stumpf in 1906 and they had one son named Felix Paul in the following year. They lived in a suburb of Munich, and while she gave piano lessons and occasional performances, he kept house and tended to his art work. His attempt to be

1962-567: A teaching post at the Academy of Art in Stuttgart. This attempt failed but he had a major success in securing a three-year contract (with a minimum annual income) with dealer Hans Goltz , whose influential gallery gave Klee major exposure, and some commercial success. A retrospective of over 300 works in 1920 was also notable. Klee taught at the Bauhaus from January 1921 to April 1931. He was

2071-653: Is "In Engelshut" (In the Angel's Care). Its overlaying technique evinces the polyphonic character of his drawing method between 1920 and 1932. The 1932 painting Ad Parnassum was also created in the Düsseldorf period. 100 cm × 126 cm (39 in × 50 in) This is one of his largest paintings, as he usually worked with small formats. In this mosaic-like work in the style of pointillism he combined different techniques and compositional principles. Influenced by his trip to Egypt from 1928 to 1929, Klee built

2180-475: Is also one of his largest, most finely worked paintings. He produced nearly 500 works in 1933 during his last year in Germany. However, in 1933, Klee began experiencing the symptoms of what was diagnosed as scleroderma after his death. The progression of his fatal disease, which made swallowing very difficult, can be followed through the art he created in his last years. His output in 1936 was only 25 pictures. In

2289-644: Is arguable that all artists are expressive but there are many examples of art production in Europe from the 15th century onward which emphasize extreme emotion. Such art often occurs during times of social upheaval and war, such as the Protestant Reformation , German Peasants' War , and Eighty Years' War between the Spanish and the Netherlands, when extreme violence, much directed at civilians,

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2398-668: Is his appeal for those interested in the history of the algorithm as exemplified by Homage to Paul Klee by computer art pioneer Frieder Nake. Expressionism Expressionism developed as an avant-garde style before the First World War . It remained popular during the Weimar Republic , particularly in Berlin. The style extended to a wide range of the arts, including expressionist architecture , painting, literature, theatre , dance, film and music . Paris became

2507-486: Is in order or not. As they assume that their counterpart could have been higher rated", they bow and scrape . Klee began to introduce a new technique in 1905: scratching on a blackened glass panel with a needle. In that manner he created about 57 Verre églomisé pictures, among those the 1905 Gartenszene (Scene on a Garden) and the 1906 Porträt des Vaters (Portrait of a Father), with which he tried to combine painting and scratching. Klee's solitary early work ended in 1911,

2616-497: Is innovative", wrote Oskar Schlemmer , Klee's future artist colleague at the Bauhaus, in his September 1916 diary. Novelist and Klee's friend Wilhelm Hausenstein wrote in his work Über Expressionismus in der Malerei (On Expressionism in Painting), "Maybe Klee's attitude is in general understandable for musical people—how Klee is one of the most delightsome violinist playing Bach and Händel, who ever walked on earth. […] For Klee,

2725-606: Is often termed the first expressionist drama. In it, an unnamed man and woman struggle for dominance. The man brands the woman; she stabs and imprisons him. He frees himself and she falls dead at his touch. As the play ends, he slaughters all around him (in the words of the text) "like mosquitoes." The extreme simplification of characters to mythic types, choral effects, declamatory dialogue and heightened intensity all would become characteristic of later expressionist plays. The German composer Paul Hindemith created an operatic version of this play, which premiered in 1921. Expressionism

2834-457: Is particularly noteworthy for its sophisticated technique. It employs watercolor on gauze and paper with a chalk ground, which produces a rich texture of triangular, circular, and crescent patterns. Demonstrating his range of exploration, mixing color and line, his Warning of the Ships (1918) is a colored drawing filled with symbolic images on a field of suppressed color. In 1919, Klee applied for

2943-511: Is the only artist known to have painted Hitler in person. He was born in Pantschowa (in modern-day Serbia ). He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna , with Christian Griepenkerl and Carl Wurzinger , then attended the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich , where he took lessons from Gabriel von Hackl and Ludwig Löfftz . In 1888 he founded a private painting school in Munich, which

3052-468: Is the very pleasant discovery, what everyone of us could or could have done, to try drawing like in our childhood. Most of his compositions show at the first glance a plain, naive expression, found in children's drawings. […] At a second analyse one can discover a technique, which takes as a basis a large maturity in thinking. A deep understanding of dealing with watercolors to paint a personal method in oil, structured in decorative shapes, let Klee stand out in

3161-483: Is well-mannered." Some of the style's main visual artists of the early 20th century were: The style originated principally in Germany and Austria. There were groups of expressionist painters, including Der Blaue Reiter and Die Brücke . Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider, named after a painting) was based in Munich and Die Brücke (The Bridge) was originally based in Dresden (some members moved to Berlin ). Die Brücke

3270-614: The Paul Klee Notebooks , are held to be as important for modern art as Leonardo da Vinci 's A Treatise on Painting was for the Renaissance . He and his colleague, Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky , both taught at the Bauhaus school of art, design and architecture in Germany . His works reflect his dry humor and his sometimes childlike perspective, his personal moods and beliefs, and his musicality. First of all,

3379-726: The Academy of Fine Arts in Munich with Heinrich Knirr and Franz von Stuck . He excelled at drawing but seemed to lack any natural color sense. He later recalled, "During the third winter I even realized that I probably would never learn to paint." During these times of youthful adventure, Klee spent much time in pubs and had affairs with lower-class women and artists' models. He had an illegitimate son in 1900 who died several weeks after birth. After receiving his Fine Arts degree, Klee traveled in Italy from October 1901 to May 1902 with friend Hermann Haller . They visited Rome, Florence, Naples and

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3488-693: The Cologne Werkbund Exhibition (1914) , and Erich Mendelsohn 's Einstein Tower in Potsdam , Germany completed in 1921. The interior of Hans Poelzig 's Berlin theatre (the Grosse Schauspielhaus ), designed for the director Max Reinhardt , is also cited sometimes. The influential architectural critic and historian Sigfried Giedion , in his book Space, Time and Architecture (1941), dismissed Expressionist architecture as

3597-691: The Kirchenfeld district  [ de ] . From 1886 to 1890, Klee visited primary school and received, at the age of 7, violin classes at the Municipal Music School . He was so talented on violin that, aged 11, he received an invitation to play as an extraordinary member of the Bern Music Association. His other hobbies, drawing and writing poems, were not fostered in the same way as music was. In his early years, following his parents' wishes, Klee focused on becoming

3706-618: The Stuttgart Conservatory , where he met his future wife Ida Frick. Hans Wilhelm Klee was active as a music teacher at the Bern State Seminary in Hofwil near Bern until 1931. Klee was able to develop his music skills as his parents encouraged and inspired him throughout his life. In 1880, his family moved to Bern, where they eventually, in 1897, after a number of changes of residence, moved into their own house in

3815-489: The USASA Field Station Augsburg ) to work as a clerk for the treasurer until the end of the war. This allowed him to stay in a small room outside of the barrack block and continue painting. He continued to paint during the entire war and managed to exhibit in several shows. By 1917, Klee's work was selling well and art critics acclaimed him as the best of the new German artists. His Ab ovo (1917)

3924-493: The "Gymnasium" of Bern, where he qualified in the Humanities . With his characteristic dry wit, he wrote, "After all, it's rather difficult to achieve the exact minimum, and it involves risks." On his own time, in addition to his deep interests in music and art, Klee was a great reader of literature, and later a writer on art theory and aesthetics . With his parents' reluctant permission, in 1898 Klee began studying art at

4033-511: The "cool romanticism of abstraction". In gaining a second artistic vocabulary, Klee added color to his abilities in draftsmanship, and in many works combined them successfully, as he did in one series he called "operatic paintings". One of the most literal examples of this new synthesis is The Bavarian Don Giovanni (1919). After returning home, Klee painted his first pure abstract, In the Style of Kairouan (1914), composed of colored rectangles and

4142-435: The 1918 watercolor painting Einst dem Grau der Nacht enttaucht , a compositional implemented poem, possibly written by Klee, he incorporated letters in small, in terms of color separated squares, cutting off the first verse from the second one with silver paper. At the top of the cardboard, which carries the picture, the verses are inscribed in manuscript form. Here, Klee did not lean on Delaunay's colors, but on Marc's, although

4251-792: The 1920s, the Thannhauser family became his major patrons. After 1922, he lived in Upper Bavaria . During the Nazi régime, he remained popular and, in 1937, was represented at the first Große Deutsche Kunstausstellung at the Haus der Kunst in Munich, with one of his portraits of Adolf Hitler. Over the next few years, he exhibited fourteen works there altogether, including portraits of Hitler's private chauffeur, Julius Schreck , and his mother Klara . Both paintings were hung in Hitler's office at

4360-683: The Amalfi Coast, studying the master painters of past centuries. He exclaimed, "The Forum and the Vatican have spoken to me. Humanism wants to suffocate me." He responded to the colors of Italy, but sadly noted, "that a long struggle lies in store for me in this field of color." For Klee, color represented the optimism and nobility in art, and a hope for relief from the pessimistic nature he expressed in his black-and-white grotesques and satires. Returning to Bern, he lived with his parents for several years, and took occasional art classes. By 1905, he

4469-555: The American poet Walt Whitman 's (1819–1892) Leaves of Grass (1855–1891); the Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821–1881); Norwegian painter Edvard Munch (1863–1944); Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890); Belgian painter James Ensor (1860–1949); and pioneering Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud (1856–1939). In 1905, a group of four German artists, led by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner , formed Die Brücke (the Bridge) in

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4578-555: The Bauhaus catalog of works, since they were intended as private toys from the beginning. Nevertheless, they are an impressive example of Klee's imagery. He not only dealt with puppet shows privately, but also in his artistic work at the Bauhaus. In 1931, Klee transferred to Düsseldorf to teach at the Akademie; the Nazis shut down the Bauhaus soon after. During this time, Klee illustrated a series of guardian angels. Among these figurations

4687-580: The Bern years; ten of these were made between 1903 and 1905 in the cycle "Inventionen" (Inventions), which were presented in June 1906 at the "Internationale Kunstausstellung des Vereins bildender Künstler Münchens ' Secession '" (International Art Exhibition of the Association for Graphic Arts, Munich, Secession), his first appearance as a painter in the public. Klee had removed the third Invention, Pessimistische Allegorie des Gebirges (Pessimistic Allegory of

4796-609: The German classic painter of the Cubism, the world music became his companion, possibly even a part of his art; the composition, written in notes, seems to be not dissimilar." When Klee visited the Paris surrealism exhibition in 1925, Max Ernst was impressed by his work. His partially morbid motifs appealed to the surrealists. André Breton helped to develop the surrealism and renamed Klee's 1912 painting Zimmerperspektive mit Einwohnern (Room Perspective with People) to chambre spirit in

4905-516: The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), especially his philosophical novel Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883–1892); the later plays of the Swedish dramatist August Strindberg (1849–1912), including the trilogy To Damascus (1898–1901), A Dream Play (1902), The Ghost Sonata (1907); Frank Wedekind (1864–1918), especially the "Lulu" plays Erdgeist ( Earth Spirit ) (1895) and Die Büchse der Pandora ( Pandora's Box ) (1904);

5014-606: The German word for death, "Tod", appearing in the face. He died in Muralto , Locarno, Switzerland, on 29 June 1940 without having obtained Swiss citizenship, despite his birth in that country. His art work was considered too revolutionary, even degenerate, by the Swiss authorities, but eventually they accepted his request six days after his death. His legacy comprised about 9,000 works of art. The words on his tombstone, Klee's credo, placed there by his son Felix, say, "I cannot be grasped in

5123-695: The Idea (1915). After finishing the military training course, which began on 11 March 1916, he was committed as a soldier behind the front. Klee moved on 20 August to the aircraft maintenance company in Oberschleissheim , executing skilled manual work, such as restoring aircraft camouflage , and accompanying aircraft transports. On 17 January 1917, he was transferred to the Royal Bavarian flying school in Gersthofen (which 54 years later became

5232-544: The Mentally Ill) was published in 1922. In 1937, some papers from Prinzhorn's anthology were presented at the National Socialist propaganda exhibition " Entartete Kunst " in Munich, with the purpose of defaming the works of Kirchner , Klee, Nolde and other artists by likening them to the works of the insane. In 1949 Marcel Duchamp commented on Paul Klee: "The first reaction in front of a Klee painting

5341-603: The Mountain), in February 1906 from his cycle. The satirical etchings, for example Jungfrau im Baum/Jungfrau (träumend) (Virgin on the tree/Virgin (dreaming)) from 1903 and Greiser Phoenix (Aged Phoenix) from 1905, were classified by Klee as "surrealistic outposts". Jungfrau im Baum ties on the motive Le cattive madri (1894) by Giovanni Segantini . The picture was influenced by grotesque lyric poetries of Alfred Jarry , Max Jacob and Christian Morgenstern . It features

5450-405: The Nazis. In 1935, two years after moving to Switzerland and working in a very confined situation, Klee developed scleroderma , an autoimmune disease resulting in hardening of connective tissue. He endured pain that seems to be reflected in his last works of art. In his last months he created 50 drawings of angels. One of his last paintings, Death and Fire , features a skull in the center with

5559-645: The art of living; then as my ideal profession, poetry and philosophy, and as my real profession, plastic arts ; in the last resort, for lack of income, illustrations. Paul Klee was born in Münchenbuchsee , Switzerland, as the second child of German music teacher Hans Wilhelm Klee (1849–1940) and Swiss singer Ida Marie Klee, born Frick (1855–1921). His sister Mathilde (died 6 December 1953) was born on 28 January 1876 in Walzenhausen . Their father came from Tann and studied singing, piano, organ and violin at

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5668-417: The back of his head there is a large "X", symbolizing that his art was no longer valued in Germany. In this period Klee mainly worked on large-sized pictures. After the onset of illness, there were about 25 works in the 1936 catalogue, but his productivity increased in 1937 to 264 pictures, 1938 to 489, and 1939—his most productive year—to 1254. They dealt with ambivalent themes, expressing his personal fate,

5777-404: The centre" of expressionist music, with dissonance predominating, so that the "harmonious, affirmative element of art is banished" (Adorno 2009, 275–76). Erwartung and Die Glückliche Hand , by Schoenberg, and Wozzeck , an opera by Alban Berg (based on the play Woyzeck by Georg Büchner ), are examples of Expressionist works. If one were to draw an analogy from paintings, one may describe

5886-505: The city of Dresden. This was arguably the founding organization for the German Expressionist movement, though they did not use the word itself. A few years later, in 1911, a like-minded group of young artists formed Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) in Munich. The name came from Wassily Kandinsky 's Der Blaue Reiter painting of 1903. Among their members were Kandinsky, Franz Marc , Paul Klee , and August Macke . However,

5995-402: The contemporary art and make him incomparable. On the other side, his experiment was adopted in the last 30 years by many other artists as a basis for newer creations in the most different areas in painting. His extreme productivity never shows evidence of repetition, as is usually the case. He had so much to say, that a Klee never became another Klee." One of Klee's paintings, Angelus Novus ,

6104-402: The cultural institution as a whole is through its relationship to realism and the dominant conventions of representation." More explicitly, that the expressionists rejected the ideology of realism. The term refers to an "artistic style in which the artist seeks to depict not objective reality but rather the subjective emotions and responses that objects and events arouse within a person". It

6213-412: The desert, the sun's intense rays seemed to envelop all living things, and at night, the movement of the stars felt even more palpable. In the architecture of the ancient funerary moments Klee discovered a sense of proportion and measure in which human beings appeared to establish a convincing relationship with the immensity of the landscape; furthermore, he was drawn to the esoteric numerology that governed

6322-482: The editorial team of the almanac Der Blaue Reiter , founded by Franz Marc and Kandinsky. On meeting Kandinsky, Klee recorded, "I came to feel a deep trust in him. He is somebody, and has an exceptionally beautiful and lucid mind." Other members included Macke, Gabriele Münter and Marianne von Werefkin . Klee became in a few months one of the most important and independent members of the Blaue Reiter , but he

6431-412: The expressionist painting technique as the distortion of reality (mostly colors and shapes) to create a nightmarish effect for the particular painting as a whole. Expressionist music roughly does the same thing, where the dramatically increased dissonance creates, aurally, a nightmarish atmosphere. In architecture, two specific buildings are identified as Expressionist: Bruno Taut 's Glass Pavilion of

6540-746: The ferment of Cubism and the pioneering examples of "pure painting", an early term for abstract art . The use of bold color by Robert Delaunay and Maurice de Vlaminck also inspired him. Rather than copy these artists, Klee began working out his own color experiments in pale watercolors and did some primitive landscapes, including In the Quarry (1913) and Houses near the Gravel Pit (1913), using blocks of color with limited overlap. Klee acknowledged that "a long struggle lies in store for me in this field of color" in order to reach his "distant noble aim." Soon, he discovered "the style which connects drawing and

6649-516: The few plastic works are hand puppets made between 1916 and 1925, for his son Felix. The artist neither counted them as a component of his oeuvre, nor did he list them in his catalogue raisonné . Thirty of the preserved puppets are stored at the Zentrum Paul Klee , Bern. Some of Klee's early preserved children's drawings, which his grandmother encouraged, were listed on his catalogue raisonné . A total of 19 etchings were produced during

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6758-586: The first major monograph on Klee's work was published, written by Will Grohmann. Klee also taught at the Düsseldorf Academy from 1931 to 1933, and was singled out by a Nazi newspaper, "Then that great fellow Klee comes onto the scene, already famed as a Bauhaus teacher in Dessau. He tells everyone he's a thoroughbred Arab, but he's a typical Galician Jew." His home was searched by the Gestapo and he

6867-454: The freedom to explore radical ideas and styles. At sixteen, Klee's landscape drawings already show considerable skill. Around 1897, Klee started his diary, which he kept until 1918, and which has provided scholars with valuable insight into his life and thinking. During his school years, he avidly drew in his school books, in particular drawing caricatures , and already demonstrating skill with line and volume. He barely passed his final exams at

6976-417: The garden are clearly visible, a further steering towards abstraction is noticeable. In his diary Klee wrote the following note at that time: In the large molding pit are lying ruins, on which one partially hangs. They provide the material for the abstraction. […] The terrible the world, the abstract the art, while a happy world produces secularistic art. Under the impression of his military service he created

7085-483: The here and now, for my dwelling place is as much among the dead as the yet unborn. Slightly closer to the heart of creation than usual, but still not close enough." He was buried at Schosshaldenfriedhof , Bern, Switzerland. Klee has been variously associated with Expressionism , Cubism , Futurism , Surrealism , and Abstraction , but his pictures are difficult to classify. He generally worked in isolation from his peers, and interpreted new art trends in his own way. He

7194-550: The idea from the Symbolist director and designer, Edward Gordon Craig ). Staging was especially important in Expressionist drama, with directors forgoing the illusion of reality to block actors in as close to two-dimensional movement. Directors also made heavy use of lighting effects to create stark contrast and as another method to heavily emphasize emotion and convey the play or a scene's message. German expressionist playwrights: Playwrights influenced by Expressionism: Among

7303-561: The late 20th and early 21st century have developed distinct styles that may be considered part of Expressionism. After World War II, figurative expressionism influenced artists and styles around the world. In the U.S., American Expressionism and American Figurative Expressionism , particularly Boston Expressionism , were an integral part of American modernism around the Second World War. Thomas B. Hess wrote that "the ‘New figurative painting’ which some have been expecting as

7412-654: The later 1930s, his health recovered somewhat and he was encouraged by a visit from Kandinsky and Picasso. Klee's simpler and larger designs enabled him to keep up his output in his final years, and in 1939 he created over 1,200 works, a career high for one year. He used heavier lines and mainly geometric forms with fewer but larger blocks of color. His varied color palettes, some with bright colors and others somber, perhaps reflected his alternating moods of optimism and pessimism. Back in Germany in 1937, seventeen of Klee's pictures were included in an exhibition of " Degenerate art " and 102 of his works in public collections were seized by

7521-410: The most vociferous 'anti-expressionists.'" What can be said, however, is that it was a movement that developed in the early twentieth century, mainly in Germany, in reaction to the dehumanizing effect of industrialization and the growth of cities, and that "one of the central means by which expressionism identifies itself as an avant-garde movement, and by which it marks its distance to traditions and

7630-488: The object; a permanent segregation never took place. It took over ten years that Klee worked on experiments and analysis of the color, resulting to an independent artificial work, whereby his design ideas were based on the colorful oriental world. Föhn im Marc'schen Garten (Foehn at Marc's Garden) was made after the Turin trip. It indicates the relations between color and the stimulus of Macke and Delaunay. Although elements of

7739-545: The opposite of Impressionism : "An Expressionist wishes, above all, to express himself... (an Expressionist rejects) immediate perception and builds on more complex psychic structures... Impressions and mental images that pass through ... people's soul as through a filter which rids them of all substantial accretions to produce their clear essence [...and] are assimilated and condensed into more general forms, into types, which he transcribes through simple short-hand formulae and symbols." Important precursors of Expressionism were

7848-604: The other if the result is achievement." Klee was also a member of Die Blaue Vier (The Blue Four), with Kandinsky, Lyonel Feininger , and Alexej von Jawlensky , which formed in 1923, at the instigation of Galka Scheyer, who subsequently organized exhibitions of their work in the United States. In 1924, Klee had his first exhibits in Paris, and he became a hit with the French Surrealists. Klee visited Egypt in 1928, which impressed him less than Tunisia. In 1929,

7957-694: The painter Kandinsky he avoided "traditional forms of beauty" to convey powerful feelings in his music. Arnold Schoenberg , Anton Webern and Alban Berg , the members of the Second Viennese School , are important Expressionists (Schoenberg was also an expressionist painter). Other composers that have been associated with expressionism are Krenek (the Second Symphony), Paul Hindemith ( The Young Maiden ), Igor Stravinsky ( Japanese Songs ), Alexander Scriabin (late piano sonatas) (Adorno 2009, 275). Another significant expressionist

8066-523: The painting Trauerblumen (Velvetbells) in 1917, which, with its graphical signs, vegetal and phantastic shapes, is a forerunner of his future works, harmonically combining graphic, color and object. For the first time birds appear in the pictures, such as in Blumenmythos (Flower Myth) from 1918, mirroring the flying and falling planes he saw in Gersthofen, and the photographed plane crashes. In

8175-724: The picture content of both painters does not correspond with each other. Herwarth Walden , Klee's art dealer, saw in them a "Wachablösung" (changing of the guard) of his art. Since 1919 he often used oil colors, with which he combined watercolors and colored pencil. The Villa R (Kunstmuseum Basel) from 1919 unites visible realities such as sun, moon, mountains, trees and architectures, as well as surreal pledges and sentiment readings. His works during this time include Camel (in rhythmic landscape with trees) as well as other paintings with abstract graphical elements such as betroffener Ort (Affected Place) (1922). From that period he created Die Zwitscher-Maschine (The Twittering Machine), which

8284-434: The poets associated with German Expressionism were: Other poets influenced by expressionism: In prose, the early stories and novels of Alfred Döblin were influenced by Expressionism, and Franz Kafka is sometimes labelled an Expressionist. Some further writers and works that have been called Expressionist include: The term expressionism "was probably first applied to music in 1918, especially to Schoenberg", because like

8393-597: The political situation and his wit. Examples are the watercolor painting Musiker (musician), a stick-man face with partially serious, partially smiling mouth; and the Revolution des Viadukts (Revolution of the Viadukt), an anti-fascist art. In Viadukt (1937) the bridge arches split from the bank as they refuse to be linked to a chain and are therefore rioting. Since 1938, Klee worked more intensively with hieroglyphic-like elements. The painting Insula dulcamara from

8502-572: The presentation of the suffering and death of Jesus in the Stations of the Cross . Strindberg had pioneered this form with his autobiographical trilogy To Damascus . These plays also often dramatise the struggle against bourgeois values and established authority, frequently personified by the Father. In Sorge's The Beggar , ( Der Bettler ), for example, the young hero's mentally ill father raves about

8611-487: The prospect of mining the riches of Mars and is finally poisoned by his son. In Bronnen's Parricide ( Vatermord ), the son stabs his tyrannical father to death, only to have to fend off the frenzied sexual overtures of his mother. In Expressionist drama, the speech may be either expansive and rhapsodic, or clipped and telegraphic. Director Leopold Jessner became famous for his expressionistic productions, often set on stark, steeply raked flights of stairs (having borrowed

8720-455: The realm of color." Klee's artistic breakthrough came in 1914 when he briefly visited Tunisia with August Macke and Louis Moilliet and was impressed by the quality of the light there. He wrote, "Color has taken possession of me; no longer do I have to chase after it, I know that it has hold of me forever... Color and I are one. I am a painter." With that realization, faithfulness to nature faded in importance. Instead, Klee began to delve into

8829-436: The rendering of the visual appearance of objects, Expressionist artists sought to portray emotions and subjective interpretations. It was not important to reproduce an aesthetically pleasing impression of the artistic subject matter, they felt, but rather to represent vivid emotional reactions by powerful colours and dynamic compositions. Kandinsky, the main artist of Der Blaue Reiter , believed that with simple colours and shapes

8938-496: The rise of Adolf Hitler in the 1930s, there were subsequent expressionist works. Expressionism is notoriously difficult to define, in part because it "overlapped with other major 'isms' of the modernist period: with Futurism , Vorticism , Cubism , Surrealism and Dadaism ." Richard Murphy also comments, “the search for an all-inclusive definition is problematic to the extent that the most challenging expressionists such as Kafka , Gottfried Benn and Döblin were simultaneously

9047-525: The same year, which is one of his largest (88 cm × 176 cm (35 in × 69 in)), shows a white face in the middle of the elements, symbolizing death with its black-circled eye sockets. Bitterness and sorrow are not rare in much of his works during this time. Klee created in 1940 a picture which strongly differs from the previous works, leaving it unsigned on the scaffold. The comparatively realistic still life , Ohne Titel , later named as Der Todesengel (Angel of Death), depicts flowers,

9156-497: The spectator could perceive the moods and feelings in the paintings, a theory that encouraged him towards increased abstraction. In Paris a group of artists dubbed the École de Paris ( School of Paris ) by André Warnod were also known for their expressionist art. This was especially prevalent amongst the foreign born Jewish painters of the School of Paris such as Chaim Soutine , Marc Chagall , Yitzhak Frenkel , Abraham Mintchine and others. These artists' expressionism

9265-444: The style of several of the films of Ingmar Bergman . More generally, the term expressionism can be used to describe cinematic styles of great artifice, such as the technicolor melodramas of Douglas Sirk or the sound and visual design of David Lynch 's films. Two leading Expressionist journals published in Berlin were Der Sturm , published by Herwarth Walden starting in 1910, and Die Aktion , which first appeared in 1911 and

9374-421: The term Expressionism did not firmly establish itself until 1913. Though mainly a German artistic movement initially and most predominant in painting, poetry and the theatre between 1910 and 1930, most precursors of the movement were not German. Furthermore, there have been expressionist writers of prose fiction, as well as non-German-speaking expressionist writers, and, while the movement declined in Germany with

9483-484: The violin, I would have guessed that on many occasions his drawings were transcriptions of music." Pamela Kort observed: "Klee's 1933 drawings present their beholder with an unparalleled opportunity to glimpse a central aspect of his aesthetics that has remained largely unappreciated: his lifelong concern with the possibilities of parody and wit . Herein lies their real significance, particularly for an audience unaware that Klee's art has political dimensions." Among

9592-460: The way in which these monuments had been built." In 1933, his last year in Germany, he created a range of paintings and drawings; the catalogue raisonné comprised 482 works. The self-portrait in the same year—with the programmatic title von der Liste gestrichen (removed from the list)—provides information about his feeling after losing his professorship. The abstract portrait was painted in dark colors and shows closed eyes and compressed lips, while on

9701-501: The work of American artist Marsden Hartley , who met Kandinsky in Germany in 1913. In late 1939, at the beginning of World War II , New York City received many European artists. After the war, Expressionism influenced many young American artists. Norris Embry (1921–1981) studied with Oskar Kokoschka in 1947 and during the next 43 years produced a large body of work in the Expressionist tradition. Embry has been termed "the first American German Expressionist". Other American artists of

9810-549: The year he met and was inspired by the graphic artist Alfred Kubin , and became associated with the artists of the Blaue Reiter . During his twelve-day educational trip to Tunis in April 1914 Klee produced with Macke and Moilliet watercolor paintings, which implement the strong light and color stimulus of the North African countryside in the fashion of Paul Cézanne and Robert Delaunay's cubistic form concepts. The aim

9919-457: Was Béla Bartók in early works, written in the second decade of the 20th century, such as Bluebeard's Castle (1911), The Wooden Prince (1917), and The Miraculous Mandarin (1919). Important precursors of expressionism are Richard Wagner (1813–1883), Gustav Mahler (1860–1911), and Richard Strauss (1864–1949). Theodor Adorno describes expressionism as concerned with the unconscious, and states that "the depiction of fear lies at

10028-579: Was Schwarz-Weiß , as it only regarded graphic painting. Initially planned to be released in 1911, the release date of the Der Blau Reiter almanac by Kandinsky and Marc was delayed in May 1912, including the reproduced ink drawing Steinhauer by Klee. At the same time, Kandinsky published his art history writing Über das Geistige in der Kunst . The association opened Klee's mind to modern theories of color. His travels to Paris in 1912 also exposed him to

10137-423: Was a dominant influence on early 20th-century German theatre, of which Georg Kaiser and Ernst Toller were the most famous playwrights. Other notable Expressionist dramatists included Reinhard Sorge , Walter Hasenclever , Hans Henny Jahnn , and Arnolt Bronnen . Important precursors were the Swedish playwright August Strindberg and German actor and dramatist Frank Wedekind. During the 1920s, Expressionism enjoyed

10246-892: Was a natural draftsman, and through long experimentation developed a mastery of color and tonality. Many of his works combine these skills. He uses a great variety of color palettes from nearly monochromatic to highly polychromatic . His works often have a fragile childlike quality to them and are usually on a small scale. He often used geometric forms and grid format compositions as well as letters and numbers, frequently combined with playful figures of animals and people. Some works were completely abstract. Many of his works and their titles reflect his dry humor and varying moods; some express political convictions. They frequently allude to poetry, music and dreams and sometimes include words or musical notation . The later works are distinguished by spidery hieroglyph -like symbols. Rainer Maria Rilke wrote about Klee in 1921, "Even if you hadn't told me he plays

10355-497: Was active for a longer period than Der Blaue Reiter, which was only together for a year (1912). The Expressionists were influenced by artists and sources including Edvard Munch, Vincent van Gogh and African art . They were also aware of the work being done by the Fauves in Paris, who influenced Expressionism's tendency toward arbitrary colours and jarring compositions. In reaction and opposition to French Impressionism, which emphasized

10464-551: Was an Expressionist style in German cinema, important examples of which are Robert Wiene 's The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), Paul Wegener 's The Golem: How He Came into the World (1920), Fritz Lang 's Metropolis (1927) and F. W. Murnau 's Nosferatu, a Symphony of Horror (1922) and The Last Laugh (1924). The term "expressionist" is also sometimes used to refer to stylistic devices thought to resemble those of German Expressionism, such as film noir cinematography or

10573-540: Was described as restless and emotional by Frenkel. These artists, centered in the Montparnasse district of Paris tended to portray human subjects and humanity, evoking emotion through facial expression. Others focused on the expression of mood rather than a formal structure. The art of Jewish expressionists was characterized as dramatic and tragic, perhaps in connection to Jewish suffering following persecution and pogroms. The ideas of German expressionism influenced

10682-458: Was developing some experimental techniques, including drawing with a needle on a blackened pane of glass, resulting in fifty-seven works including his Portrait of My Father (1906). In the years 1903–05 he also completed a cycle of eleven zinc-plate etchings called Inventions , his first exhibited works, in which he illustrated several grotesque characters. He commented, "though I'm fairly satisfied with my etchings I can't go on like this. I'm not

10791-489: Was edited by Franz Pfemfert . Der Sturm published poetry and prose from contributors such as Peter Altenberg , Max Brod , Richard Dehmel , Alfred Döblin , Anatole France , Knut Hamsun , Arno Holz, Karl Kraus , Selma Lagerlöf , Adolf Loos , Heinrich Mann , Paul Scheerbart , and René Schickele , and writings, drawings, and prints by such artists as Kokoschka , Kandinsky, and members of Der blaue Reiter . Oskar Kokoschka 's 1909 playlet, Murderer, The Hope of Women

10900-524: Was fired from his job. His self-portrait Struck from the List (1933) commemorates the sad occasion. In 1933–34, Klee had shows in London and Paris, and finally met Pablo Picasso , whom he greatly admired. The Klee family emigrated to Switzerland in late 1933. Klee was at the peak of his creative output. His Ad Parnassum (1932) is considered his masterpiece and the best example of his pointillist style ; it

11009-475: Was inventive in his methods and technique. Klee worked in many different media— oil paint , watercolor , ink , pastel , etching , and others. He often combined them into one work. He used canvas, burlap, muslin, linen, gauze, cardboard, metal foils, fabric, wallpaper, and newsprint. Klee employed spray paint, knife application, stamping, glazing, and impasto, and mixed media such as oil with watercolor, watercolor with pen and India ink, and oil with tempera. He

11118-675: Was later removed from the National Gallery . After being named defamatory in the Munich exhibition " Entartete Kunst ", the painting was later bought by the Buchholz Gallery, New York, and then transferred in 1939 to the Museum of Modern Art . The "twittering" in the title refers to the open-beaked birds, while the "machine" is illustrated by the crank. The watercolor painting appears at a first glance childish, but it allows more interpretations. The picture can be interpreted as

11227-523: Was not to imitate nature, but to create compositions analogous to nature's formative principle, as in the works In den Häusern von Saint-Germain (In the Houses of Saint-Germain) and Straßencafé (Streetcafé). Klee conveyed the scenery in a grid, so that it dissolves into colored harmony. He also created abstract works in that period such as Abstract and Farbige Kreise durch Farbbänder verbunden (Colored Circles Tied Through Inked Ribbons). He never abandoned

11336-596: Was not yet fully integrated. The release of the almanac was delayed for the benefit of an exhibition. The first Blaue Reiter exhibition took place from 18 December 1911 to 1 January 1912 in the Moderne Galerie Heinrich Thannhauser in Munich. Klee did not attend it, but in the second exhibition, which occurred from 12 February to 18 March 1912 in the Galerie Goltz , 17 of his graphic works were shown. The name of this art exhibition

11445-401: Was only during the 1970s that Expressionism in architecture came to be re-evaluated more positively. Heinrich Knirr Heinrich Knirr (2 September 1862 – 26 May 1944) was an Austrian Empire-born German painter, known for his genre scenes and portraits, although he also did landscapes and still-lifes . He is best known for creating the official portrait of Adolf Hitler for 1937 and

11554-518: Was represented in propagandist popular prints . These were often unimpressive aesthetically but had the capacity to arouse extreme emotions in the viewer. Expressionism has been likened to Baroque by critics such as art historian Michel Ragon and German philosopher Walter Benjamin . According to Alberto Arbasino , a difference between the two is that "Expressionism doesn't shun the violently unpleasant effect, while Baroque does. Expressionism throws some terrific 'fuck yous', Baroque doesn't. Baroque

11663-510: Was somewhat detached from it, as he wrote ironically, "I have long had this war in me. That is why, inwardly, it is none of my concern." Klee was conscripted as a Landsturmsoldat (soldier of the reserve forces in Prussia or Imperial Germany) on 5 March 1916. The deaths of his friends August Macke and Franz Marc in battle began to affect him. Venting his distress, he created several pen and ink lithographs on war themes including Death for

11772-474: Was the object of an interpretative text by German philosopher and literary critic Walter Benjamin , who purchased the painting in 1921. In his "Theses on the Philosophy of History" Benjamin suggests that the angel depicted in the painting might be seen as representing the angel of history. Another aspect of his legacy, and one demonstrating his multi-faceted presence in the modern artistic imagination,

11881-610: Was very popular throughout Europe. He remained in Munich and opened a private art school there in 1888. Eventually, his school gained a good reputation throughout Europe. From 1898 to 1910, he also taught at the Munich Academy. He was also a member of the Munich Secession and, later, the Vienna Secession . At the beginning of World War I, he gave up his teaching activities and moved to Starnberg . In

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