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***August
2004*** |
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Paul Klee |
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Paul Klee grew up in Switzerland surrounded by a musical family and was himself a violinist from a young age. After much hesitation he chose to study art instead of music, and attended the Munich Art Academy in 1900. His teacher was the popular symbolist and society painter Franz von Stuck. Klee left school shortly after starting and toured Italy from 1901 to 1902, studying art at museums and creating many etchings and pen and ink drawings which comprise most of his early work. These early pieces combine satirical, grotesque, and surreal elements and reveal the influence of Goya and the Belgian painter James Ensor, both of whom Klee admired greatly. In 1906 he was married to a pianist, Lili Stumpf, and they settled in Munich, which was an important center for avant-garde art at the time. |
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That same year he exhibited his etchings for the first time and became friends with painters Wassily Kandinsky and August Macke. Together they joined ‘Der Blaue Reiter’ (The Blue Rider), an expressionist group that contributed much to the development of abstract art. Klee started exhibiting regularly and made an important visit to Paris in 1912 where he was introduced to works by Picasso, Matisse, Braque and Rousseau, which had a profound effect on his work. |
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In 1916, Klee, who remained in Munich during the First World War, was stationed in a German air force depot where he worked as a painter and accompanied convoys. His friend Kandinsky fled Germany when the war started. When the war ended Klee taught at the Bauhaus school where his friend Kandinsky, after returning to Germany, was also a faculty member. In 1931 he began teaching at Dusseldorf Akademie, but he was dismissed by the Nazis, who termed his work "degenerate." In 1933, Klee returned to his birth place of Switzerland in order to flee Nazi persecution. |
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In 1935 Klee was diagnosed with the crippling collagen disease sclerodermia, which led to his death five years later and forced him to develop a simpler style using bold colours and line. During his illness he was visited by many artists including Picasso, Braque, Ludwig Kirchner and Kandinsky. In 1940 Klee had a large exhibition of his works in Berne Switzerland and in June of the same year he died of paralysis of the heart. |
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