Paul Klee , born the December 18th 1879 with Münchenbuchsee, dead the June 29th 1940, is a painter Suisse of reputation.
Biography
Years of training
Paul Klee (to pronounce " Klé ") was born with Münchenbuchsee, close to Bern in Suisse. It grows in a family of musicians. His/her Ida mother was professional singer, her father, German citizen, was professor of music and exerted in the Swiss capital. It is of him that Klee, excel violonist as of his earliest youth, inherited its love for this Article With the autumn 1898, having finished its “examinations of maturity” (baccalaureat), it begins its studies of painting to Munich, initially in the particular workshop of Knirr, then with the Academy, under the direction of Stuck. In 1899, it meets his future wife, Lily Stumpf, a pianist (*1876- † 1946). In 1900, it is registered with the Académie of the fine arts of Munich where it close Kandinsky which is there also as a pupil. It spends the winter 1901 - 1902 in Italy, stopping to remain with Rome, with Naples, Florence; it is left, over all, to take with the charm of the architecture of the Renaissance, Michel-Angel and the first Masters of the Quattrocento. Some occasional voyages lead it to Munich (where he discovers in 1904 Beardsley, Blake, Goya, Ensor) and with Paris in 1905. It goes back to Munich at the end of 1906 to marry there Lily Stumpf with which it will have only one son, Felix, born in 1907 and died in 1990.
The first works
With the exposure of Munich, it becomes acquainted with works of Vincent van Gogh and Paul Cézanne, whose teaching appears to him from the start exceptional. It exposes its first etchings to it. During the winter 1911, it approaches the group of the painters of the Der Blaue Reiter (the blue Rider) and binds friendship with Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc, August Macke and Alexej von Jawlensky. It takes part besides in several exposures of this group. In April 1912, it meets Robert Delaunay in Paris in its workshop and discovers works of Henri Rousseau, Picasso, Georges Braque. It completes illustrations for the Candide of Voltaire. All in all, it côtoie a group of painters all strongly worried by the problem of the color. It continues to be invested in the musical thought and the practice (song, violin). Its writings cover multiple fields: introspection and poetry until the First World War; theory and didactic during the years of the Bauhaus.
A short voyage in 1914 in Tunisia constitutes for him an optical experiment of first order. Coloured architecture, dazzling light, of this Mediterranean country, spontaneously involves it towards a crystalline construction of the tonalities. The subject naturalist is done poetic. Klee became a painter. It will in the final analysis choose painting, and will continuously combine its own methods with those of the two other activities.
It will be defined as a “painter-poet”. It appears among most fertile of the creators. Its catalog counts more than nine thousand titles. Its reflection on art evokes, by its width, that of Léonard de Vinci. Thus, Klee remains one of the determining personalities of the 20th century; irrecusable reference of the current esthetic thought. The titles of its tables testify to this poetic amplitude: Chime of the money moon, Soft landscapes of the tropics , Straw mattress in sections , Exercise in blue and orange , Growth of the night plants . Always visible reality is exceeded. Its painting joined also the music. Signs and writings thus marking its taste for the East.
The writing intervenes constantly in its tables. In 1914, Klee remains in Tunisia with August Macke and Louis Moilliet. This voyage testifies to research identical to those of Delaunay. The decorative step, limited a long time to the minor expressions in the Occidental culture, merges in the Islamic world with entire art. It is well this harmony which research the painting of Klee, Macke and Delaunay. The “reason” disappears with the profit from a synthetic perception, here more abstract still. Preparing the structure in squares of its future work, Klee “is attacked”, according to its own terms, “with the synthesis structures urban-architecture of the table”. With Kairouan, it notes in its Newspaper: “The color I have to me am painter. ” (Newspaper 9.260) Here that is worked out what Macke in the Almanac of the Blaue Reiter had a presentiment of (1911): the fusion of Europe and the East, in this “third style” which characterizes indeed many works of modernity. Native of Constantine, this city which he says “old like Jugurtha, built with rocks, ravines, eyries and cacti”.
Orientalism seems thus, more than one imagination, a true “obsession”, according to the word of the historian of art J. Sweetman. It is maintained by the voyage to the Middle East or in North Africa, quickly become initiatory course, with the image of the Roman stay for the former generations. Klee indeed carried out in 1929 a stay in Egypt which marks some of its fabrics like Main roads and minor roads .
During the First World War, it is engaged in 1916 the very same day death of his/her friend Franz Marc. Under the influence of his father, it will remain far from the face, which enabled him to continue its work. Demobilized in 1919, it goes back to Munich. But meanwhile, it acquired the celebrity. Three small monographs appear on him.
Bauhaus
In October 1920, the German architect Walter Gropius calls it with the Staatliches Bauhaus , kind of institute of arts and the trades founded by this last in April 1919 with Weimar.From 1921 to 1924, Klee teaches there in the branch of the painting annealed glass, then weaving. Later, he will see himself entrusting a course of painting personally. In collaboration with Kandinsky, it gives regular lessons on the form and exposes the first systematic theory of the pure pictorial means, which leads to an exceptional clarification of the suggestive possibilities contained in the abstract processes. The notes of its courses are consigned and will be published under the title Contributions to the theory of the pictorial form . In 1924, it gives a conference to the Company of the fine arts of Iéna of which the text is transcribed in its Théorie of the modern art , published in posthumous title in 1945. However the Bauhaus is subjected to intense criticisms, relating to in particular its not-profitability and it is dissolved officially on December 26th 1924 with end of contracts of the teachers in April 1925. The school is then taken again with Dessau where Klee settles in the same house as Kandinsky. Its career of teacher starts to suffer however from a certain absenteeism, its artistic production intense collecting all its energy. After the departure of Gropius of the school, the latter takes an orientation towards architecture and town planning, the painters being relegated to the second plan, which Klee does not fail to criticize, which resigns of its station at April 1st 1931.
However, on the lexical level, the common terminology (composition, your, range, harmony, rate/rhythm, agreement, running away, etc) provides to Klee many titles of which runnings away in red . In this context, Klee imagines a polyphonic painting which “exceeds the music insofar as the temporal one is more space there” (Newspaper 1081). Works “divisionnists” - one is entitled singularity of the plants - transpose the sound mode to the visual one: coloured flat tints covered by the modulation with separate keys constitute studies of melody and rhythmic counterpoint.
Last years
In 1931, Klee is called with the Academy of Düsseldorf, where it can be devoted with more independence to its own work. But with the advent of the Nazism, in 1933, the artist, who however places himself apart from any policy, is shown of “cultural”, and relieved Bolchevism. It turns over then, in the capacity as emigrant, in its birthplace of Bern. And it is there that the last phase of its Article the format of its works begins develops, an extreme simplicity pushes it to eliminate all that is superfluous, light linear texture is reinforced large signs.
It can be instructive to study works of the painters while remembering the indications of Klee, and to seek there the multiplicity of the ways spared in work. The theories of Klee had a considerable interest, not only for the artists, but also for the spectator and the historian himself. By posing in a new way the report/ratio of average the techniques and direction, they show that the point, the line, the key, tons them, the composition are the true signs of the painter.
Towards the end of its life, it returns to the images inspired by the language of the mentally ills, to the monsters, the angels, the obsession of dead ( dark Voyage in winter , 1940) and from the passage, set of themes essential of this poet-painter visionary. In 1935, Klee starts to feel the first effects of a malignant affection of the skin, the Sclérodermie. He dies about it on June 29th 1940 at the hospital of Locarno, Suisse, without never to have had the Swiss nationality which it had wished so much. Irony of fate, it is only the following day that the town of Bern will decree it to him; sixty-five years later, will be set up downtown this same the superb museum devoted to the work of the artist, joining together the largest collection in the world of its productions, the Zentrum Paul Klee.
Paul Klee leaves an immense heritage. He knew to express that the table must be an organic thing in itself, as are organic the plants and the animals, all that lives in the world and in the world. It is there the most important assertion of the work of Paul Klee who announces by there the painters of inobjective painting. He precedes the surrealist ones by his visions, his taste of the dream, his abandonment with irrational, and abstracted by his musical funds which are only spots of color and suggestion of melody.
Written works
- Theory of the modern art
- Course of Bauhaus: contributions to the theory of the pictorial form
- Correspondences , French translation in 5 volumes.
- Newspaper : it marks out its life until 1917, one finds there memories of childhood, the first loves but also a reflection on painting and the music
- creative Confession and Poèmes , translated into French by Armel Guerne, in Aquarelles and drawings , Delpire, 1959.
Museums
- Center Paul Klee with Bern, conceived by Renzo Piano.
Quotations
- " Art does not reproduce the visible one, it returns visible."
- " One gives up the area of ici-bas to go to build other side in an area beyond which can at least exist intact. Abstraction. The foid romanticism of this style without pathos is amazing. The more this world (of today precisely) is done terrible, the more art wants to be abstract, while a happy world produces an art carried towards the ici-bas." (Newspaper 951)
See too
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