Paul Klee

German, born in Switzerland, 1879–1940

BiographyBorn 18 December 1879 in Münchenbuchsee near Bern to the music teacher Hans Klee, Paul Klee showed equal talent for music and art early on. After finishing school in 1898, he studied at the private academy of Heinrich Knirr in Munich, and after 1900 at the academy with Franz von Stuck (1863-1928). With the sculptor Hermann Haller, Klee traveled in Italy between 1901 and 1902, and became engaged that same year to the pianist Lily Stumpf, whom he married in 1906; their son Felix was born in 1907. At first disappointed with his painterly effects, Klee concentrated on printmaking and drawing. In 1911 he met Vasilij Kandingsky and other members of the Blaue Reiter, with whom he exhibited in 1912. Although Kandinsky's work and the Orphism of Robert Delaunay (1885-1941) tempted Klee towards a return to color, he continued to concentrate on graphic work until 1914, when a trip to Tunis and Kairouan, where he experienced the Arabian architecture and the intense light, liberated him as a painter.

In 1915 Klee was drafted into the German army and spent the war years at a Bavarian garrison, where he was able to create drawings and watercolors; his military duties included painting airplane wings. He exhibited his work at Hervarth Walden's Galerie der Sturm in 1913, and in exhibitions of the Neue Münchener Sezession in Munich. Klee had his first major show at the Gallery Hans Goltz in Munich in 1920, where 362 of his works were shown. Upon the invitation of Walter Gropius, he taught at the Bauhaus as "Master of Form" from 1921 until 1931,7 during which time he also traveled to France, Italy, and Egypt. In 1929 he was given major solo exhibitions at the Flechtheim Gallery in Berlin and at The Museum of Modern Art in New York. In 1931 he began teaching at the Düsseldorf Academy, but was dismissed by the National Socialists in 1933. Klee then moved to Bern, where he remained very productive in spite of having developed scleroderma, from which he died on 29 June 1940. Although many of his works were confiscated from German collections in 1937, and seventeen were included in Hitler's Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art) exhibition held in Munich, Klee's work continued to be shown in New York, Paris, and Zurich in 1938.