DOI Heft:
Barr, Alfred H.: Paul Klee
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.62262#0206
PAUL KLEE
by Alfted H. Barr jr.
His father a Bavarian, his mother Southern French, Paul Klee was born, with singular appropriateness,
in Zwitzerland near the town of Berne, in the year 1879. His childhood was passed in an atmosphere
of music for his father was a professional musician and conductor of the orchestra in which his son at
an early age played the violin. His mother, too, came of a musical family so that for a time he expected
to become a musician. However, after much debate, he was finally sent in 1898 to Munich to study drawing,
at first at the Knirr school, and then with Franz Stuck at the Academy. Stuck was an academic painter
of bizatre and macabre subjects, at times coarsely banal, but with considerable imaginative power. In
1901 Klee made the orthodox journey to Italy, but quite unorthodoxly he preferred early Christian art
to that of the quattrocento, Baroque to High Renaissance painting, and the Naples aquarium to the classical
antiquities of the Naples Museum. .
For the next few years Klee lived with his parents, producing very slowly a remarkable series of etchings
which he exhibited in Switzerland and Munich. Though he visited Paris he did not at first become aware
of the post-impressionist and /auve revolutions. He found himself more concerned with drawing and
caricatute than with painting. Goya’s fantastic Caprichos interested him as did the other-worldly engravings
of Blace and Fuseli. Of more recent draughtsmem he found Kubin’s weird humor, the quaint pathos of
James Ensor, and Redon’s visionary lithographs most to his taste. He read the tales of Hoffmann and
of Poe, the prose and poetry of Baudelaire. His admirations both in graphic art and literature were
clearly fantastic.
He moved to Munich in 1906. In the next four years he came to know through exhibitions van Gogh,
then CEzanne, and finally Matisse, who opened the eyes of the young artist to the expressive (as opposed
to the descriptive) possibilities of color and to the charm of the apparently artless and naive.
In Munich he became acquainted with three other young painters, Kandinsky, a Russian who had also
studied under Stuck, Franz Marc, and August Macke, the last two, both of them men of great promise
lost to German art during the war. The four formed the famous group of der Blaue Reiter which raised
the banner of revolt in staid academic Munich and
won a considerable success even in Berlin. It was
the Blue Rider group which first made the word Ex-
pressionism known throughout Europe. Marc painted
compositions of animals, using brilliant, pure color,
a line of great style and a somewhat cubistic technique.
Kadinsky’s abstract Improvizations werte among the first
to distegard entirely all vestiges of representation. But
Klee, while he experimented with abstract design,
continued his researtches in the realm of fantasy.
In 1912 Klee visited Paris, where he stayed for over
a year. Guillaume Appollinaire, Picasso, Delaunay,
became his friends. A journey to Tunis (Kairuan) in
1914 seems to have been equally important in disco-
vering himself to himself.
Shortly after the war the town of Weimar had formed
an extraordinary institution called the Bauhaus Academy,
placing at its head the architect, Walter Gropius. It
was primarily a technical school devoted to the study
of materials and design in architecture, furniture, typo-
graphy, and other modern industrial arts. As a‘“spiritual
counter-point” to these scientificutilitarian activities
Gropius invited three painters to live at the Bauhaus
and give instruction in drawing and painting. They Versprengter Reiter, 1929:
206
by Alfted H. Barr jr.
His father a Bavarian, his mother Southern French, Paul Klee was born, with singular appropriateness,
in Zwitzerland near the town of Berne, in the year 1879. His childhood was passed in an atmosphere
of music for his father was a professional musician and conductor of the orchestra in which his son at
an early age played the violin. His mother, too, came of a musical family so that for a time he expected
to become a musician. However, after much debate, he was finally sent in 1898 to Munich to study drawing,
at first at the Knirr school, and then with Franz Stuck at the Academy. Stuck was an academic painter
of bizatre and macabre subjects, at times coarsely banal, but with considerable imaginative power. In
1901 Klee made the orthodox journey to Italy, but quite unorthodoxly he preferred early Christian art
to that of the quattrocento, Baroque to High Renaissance painting, and the Naples aquarium to the classical
antiquities of the Naples Museum. .
For the next few years Klee lived with his parents, producing very slowly a remarkable series of etchings
which he exhibited in Switzerland and Munich. Though he visited Paris he did not at first become aware
of the post-impressionist and /auve revolutions. He found himself more concerned with drawing and
caricatute than with painting. Goya’s fantastic Caprichos interested him as did the other-worldly engravings
of Blace and Fuseli. Of more recent draughtsmem he found Kubin’s weird humor, the quaint pathos of
James Ensor, and Redon’s visionary lithographs most to his taste. He read the tales of Hoffmann and
of Poe, the prose and poetry of Baudelaire. His admirations both in graphic art and literature were
clearly fantastic.
He moved to Munich in 1906. In the next four years he came to know through exhibitions van Gogh,
then CEzanne, and finally Matisse, who opened the eyes of the young artist to the expressive (as opposed
to the descriptive) possibilities of color and to the charm of the apparently artless and naive.
In Munich he became acquainted with three other young painters, Kandinsky, a Russian who had also
studied under Stuck, Franz Marc, and August Macke, the last two, both of them men of great promise
lost to German art during the war. The four formed the famous group of der Blaue Reiter which raised
the banner of revolt in staid academic Munich and
won a considerable success even in Berlin. It was
the Blue Rider group which first made the word Ex-
pressionism known throughout Europe. Marc painted
compositions of animals, using brilliant, pure color,
a line of great style and a somewhat cubistic technique.
Kadinsky’s abstract Improvizations werte among the first
to distegard entirely all vestiges of representation. But
Klee, while he experimented with abstract design,
continued his researtches in the realm of fantasy.
In 1912 Klee visited Paris, where he stayed for over
a year. Guillaume Appollinaire, Picasso, Delaunay,
became his friends. A journey to Tunis (Kairuan) in
1914 seems to have been equally important in disco-
vering himself to himself.
Shortly after the war the town of Weimar had formed
an extraordinary institution called the Bauhaus Academy,
placing at its head the architect, Walter Gropius. It
was primarily a technical school devoted to the study
of materials and design in architecture, furniture, typo-
graphy, and other modern industrial arts. As a‘“spiritual
counter-point” to these scientificutilitarian activities
Gropius invited three painters to live at the Bauhaus
and give instruction in drawing and painting. They Versprengter Reiter, 1929:
206