The Step

The Early Life of Paul Klee

Born on December 18, 1879, in Münchenbuchsee, near Bern, Switzerland, Paul Klee grew up in a home defined by the discipline of music. He was the second child of Hans Wilhelm Klee, a German music teacher, and Ida Marie Klee, a Swiss singer. The sounds of his parents' professions likely shaped the atmosphere of his childhood, providing a rhythmic foundation that would follow him into his later years. By the age of eleven, Klee was already showing a significant talent for the violin, earning an invitation to play with the Bern Music Association.

Despite his musical aptitude, a different path began to call to him as he grew older. In 1898, he moved to Munich to begin studying at the Academy of Fine Arts. Between 1898 and 1901, he trained under Heinrich Knirr and Franz von Stuck. These early years of formal study were a period of intense learning and struggle. While he showed a natural skill for drawing, he often found the use of color to be a difficult hurdle to clear during those first cold winters in Munich.

A Journey Toward Abstraction

The path toward a new way of seeing was not a straight line. In the early years, Klee traveled to Italy from October 1901 to May 1902 with Hermann Haller. While the experience was significant, he later noted that the struggle with color remained a difficult, long-term challenge. He found himself caught between the classical traditions of the past and a growing desire to find a more personal visual language. For a long time, his work remained largely focused on drawing and black-and-white compositions, often leaning into the grotesque or the satirical.

A profound shift occurred in 1914 during a trip to Tunisia with August Macke and Louis Moilliet. The limpid light of North Africa changed everything for him. In that intense sunlight, he began to detach color from its duty to describe physical objects. Instead of using color to mimic the world, he used it as an independent force. This realization provided the push he needed to move toward abstraction. By 1915, he had turned his back to nature and never painted after the model again, choosing instead to express the world through his own internal symbols and imagination.

• Hammamet with Its Mosque (1914)

The Bauhaus and Teaching Years

In 1920, a new chapter began when Walter Gropius invited Klee to join the faculty of the Bauhaus. He spent the next decade at the school, working alongside Wassily Kandinsky. This period was perhaps his most prolific, as nearly half of his total output was produced during these ten years. His time at the Bauhaus allowed him to explore the relationship between color and form with a scientific precision that he documented extensively in his notebooks. These writings became essential for anyone trying to understand the mechanics of modern composition.

The stability of his teaching career was interrupted by the political shifts in Germany. In 1933, Klee was dismissed from his position at the Academy of Fine Arts in Düsseldorf due to the rise of the National Socialist regime, which classified his work as “degenerate.” This forced him to leave the academy and return to his native Bern. The shift in his surroundings and the growing political turmoil began to change the tone of his work, moving away from the whimsy of his earlier years toward a more somber and heavy perspective.

Technique and Artistic Style

Klee was a natural draftsman who possessed a deep, almost scientific understanding of color theory. His approach to a canvas was rarely about simple imitation; instead, he built his compositions through a highly individual style influenced by expressionism, cubism, and surrealism. He often worked on a small scale, using delicate media like watercolor on gauze or paper with a chalk ground. This experimentation allowed him to explore how light and pigment interacted in ways that traditional oil painting could not capture. He was also a prolific printmaker, utilizing zinc-plate etchings and lithographs to expand his visual language.

There was a certain playfulness in his imagery that felt both sophisticated and simple. He frequently populated his works with recurring motifs: small stick figures, suspended fish, and moon faces. These symbols were often arranged in grids or patterns that felt like visual music. His technical curiosity even led him to unconventional methods, such as using a needle to draw on blackened glass, a technique he used to create fifty-seven distinct works. This method required a steady hand and a precise understanding of how light would catch the scratches in the dark surface.

• With the Egg (1917)
• Fish Magic (1925)
• Static-Dynamic Gradation (1923)
• Comedians' Handbill (1938)

Key Works and Notable Compositions

Klee’s ability to translate the invisible into something visible is perhaps most evident in his mid-career works. In 1915, he painted Woman Knitting, a piece that captures a sense of quiet, rhythmic movement. As his fascination with the relationship between color and form deepened, he produced Fish Magic in 1925, a work that demonstrates his ability to use simple shapes to suggest something much more complex and mysterious. His compositions often relied on a specific kind of visual music, where lines and colors acted like notes on a staff.

By the late 1920s, his work took on a more structured, almost architectural quality. Ships in the Dark, created in 1927, shows his skill at balancing light and shadow to create a sense of space. As the political climate in Europe grew heavier, his art followed suit. The whimsy of his earlier years began to fade, replaced by a more somber tone. This shift is visible in Comedians' Handbill from 1938, where the lines become thicker and the forms more generalized. Even in his final years, as his health declined, he continued to find ways to express the gravity of his surroundings, as seen in the 1939 work Angel Applicant.

• Woman Knitting (1915)
• Fish Magic (1925)
• Ships in the Dark (1927)
• Comedians' Handbill (1938)
• Angel Applicant (1939)

Later Years and Death

The political climate in Europe began to darken significantly in the 1930s. In 1933, the National Socialists declared his art to be "degenerate," a decision that forced him out of his teaching position at the Academy of Fine Arts in Düsseldorf. This dismissal ended a period of relative stability and sent him back to his native Bern. As the shadows of war and political turmoil grew, his work began to change. The lightness of his earlier years faded, replaced by a more somber and melancholic perspective. His lines grew heavier, often turning into thick black bars, and his forms became more generalized and broad.

This shift in his painting reflected the increasing gravity of the world around him. The whimsicality that once defined his compositions gave way to a sense of weight and seriousness. Even as his own health declined, he continued to produce work that captured the tension of the era. His later pieces often felt more stripped down, using simpler colors and more substantial shapes to express a sense of loss or gravity. He died on June 29, 1940, in Muralto, Switzerland.

• Comedians' Handbill (1938)
• Angel Applicant (1939)

Where to See His Works Today

To find the traces of his prolific output, one might travel to Bern, Switzerland. The Zentrum Paul Klee holds a significant presence of his work, offering a space to encounter the visual language he developed throughout his life. Nearby, the Kunstmuseum Bern also preserves pieces of his history, including works like To Parnassus.

His influence reaches far beyond Switzerland. In New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Art maintains a substantial collection, including ninety works that were gifted by Heinz Berggruen. These pieces allow viewers to see the evolution of his thought through his specific use of color and form. In London, the Tate collection holds several of his compositions, such as Walpurgis Night.

• To Parnassus
• Walpurgis Night