DOI issue:
Barr, Alfred H.: Paul Klee
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.62262#0208
were the Russian Kandinsky, the
American Feininger, and the Swiss
Klee, three of the most gifted as
well as most radical artists at work
in Germany. Since 1920 Klee has
been at the Bauhaus, moving with
it to Dessau in 1926.
In the same year Feininger, Ja-
vlensky, Kandinsky, and Klee, for-
med the Blue Four which sent
exhibitions throughout Germany
and even to America. Klee also
sent paintings to the Societe Ano-
nyme exhibitions in New York
and Brooklyn.
Klee was “claimed” by the Sur-r&aliste
group in Paris but found (as did
Picasso, Braque, and Chirico) that
he was not especially interested.
His work is, however, perhaps the
finest realization of their ideals of an art which appears to be purely of the imagination, untrammeled
by reason or the outer world of empirical experience.
Frau A. F., Frau Klee, George Groß, Paul Klee* (Dessau 1930)
Klee, when one talks with him, seems the opposite of eccentric, in spite of his amazing art. He lives
in Dessau in a house designed by Gropius as a machine @& habiter near the factory-like Bauhaus building.
He is a smallish man with penetrating eyes, simple in speech and gently humorous. While one looks
over his drawings in his studio one can hear his wife playing a Mozart sonata in the room below. Only
in one corner are their curiosities, a table littered with such ornaments as shells, a skate’s egg, bits of
dried moss, a pine cone, a piece of coral, fragments of textiles, a couple of drawings by the children
of his neighbor, Feininger. These serve to break the logical severity of the Gropius interior and Bauhaus
furniture — and perhaps also serve as catalytics to Klee’s creative activity.
Very much has been written in German and French about Klee’s art. Indeed few living painters have
been the object of so much speculation. For a work by Klee is scarcely subject to methods of criticism
which follow ordinary formulae.
His pictures cannot be judged as
representations of the ordinary |
visual world. Often they defy the _
laws of design and cannot be
judged as formal compositions,
though some of them are remar-
kably interesting to the aesthetic
putrist. ;
Their appeal is primarily to the
sentiment, to the subjective ima-
gination. They have been compared,
for this reason, to the drawings of
young children at an age when they
draw spontaneously from intuitive
sourees rather than from observa-
tion. Thei have been compared to
the fantastic and often truly mar-
velous drawings of the insane who Hafeneinfahrt bei P. F. 1925 Sig. Vicomte de Noailles, Paris
208
American Feininger, and the Swiss
Klee, three of the most gifted as
well as most radical artists at work
in Germany. Since 1920 Klee has
been at the Bauhaus, moving with
it to Dessau in 1926.
In the same year Feininger, Ja-
vlensky, Kandinsky, and Klee, for-
med the Blue Four which sent
exhibitions throughout Germany
and even to America. Klee also
sent paintings to the Societe Ano-
nyme exhibitions in New York
and Brooklyn.
Klee was “claimed” by the Sur-r&aliste
group in Paris but found (as did
Picasso, Braque, and Chirico) that
he was not especially interested.
His work is, however, perhaps the
finest realization of their ideals of an art which appears to be purely of the imagination, untrammeled
by reason or the outer world of empirical experience.
Frau A. F., Frau Klee, George Groß, Paul Klee* (Dessau 1930)
Klee, when one talks with him, seems the opposite of eccentric, in spite of his amazing art. He lives
in Dessau in a house designed by Gropius as a machine @& habiter near the factory-like Bauhaus building.
He is a smallish man with penetrating eyes, simple in speech and gently humorous. While one looks
over his drawings in his studio one can hear his wife playing a Mozart sonata in the room below. Only
in one corner are their curiosities, a table littered with such ornaments as shells, a skate’s egg, bits of
dried moss, a pine cone, a piece of coral, fragments of textiles, a couple of drawings by the children
of his neighbor, Feininger. These serve to break the logical severity of the Gropius interior and Bauhaus
furniture — and perhaps also serve as catalytics to Klee’s creative activity.
Very much has been written in German and French about Klee’s art. Indeed few living painters have
been the object of so much speculation. For a work by Klee is scarcely subject to methods of criticism
which follow ordinary formulae.
His pictures cannot be judged as
representations of the ordinary |
visual world. Often they defy the _
laws of design and cannot be
judged as formal compositions,
though some of them are remar-
kably interesting to the aesthetic
putrist. ;
Their appeal is primarily to the
sentiment, to the subjective ima-
gination. They have been compared,
for this reason, to the drawings of
young children at an age when they
draw spontaneously from intuitive
sourees rather than from observa-
tion. Thei have been compared to
the fantastic and often truly mar-
velous drawings of the insane who Hafeneinfahrt bei P. F. 1925 Sig. Vicomte de Noailles, Paris
208