Paul Klee was a Swiss-born German artist. His highly individual style was influenced by movements in art that included expressionism, cubism, and surrealism.
Paintings by Paul Klee
Senecio (Klee) (1922)
Senecio or Head of a Man Going Senile is an oil on canvas mounted on panel Cubist painting by Swiss artist Paul Klee, from 1922. It is held in the Kunstmuseum Basel.
Klee's adaptation of the human head divides an elderly face into rectangles of orange, pink, yellow, and white. The flat geometric squares within the circle resemble a mask or the patches of a harlequin, hence the title's reference to the artist-performer Senecio. The triangle and curved line above the left and right eyes respectively give the illusion of a raised eyebrow.
Angelus Novus (1920)
Angelus Novus (New Angel) is a 1920 monoprint by the Swiss-German artist Paul Klee, created using the oil transfer method he invented. It is now in the collection of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.
Walter Benjamin, a noted German critic and philosopher, purchased the print in 1921. When he had to flee Germany in 1933, he took it with him into exile in Paris. Before he tried to flee further when the Nazis invaded France, Benjamin entrusted the work, together with other important papers, to Georges Bataille, who hid it at the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris where he worked. Benjamin committed suicide in September 1940 in Spain, the night before he was due to be deported back to France. After World War II, Bataille gave the print to Theodor W. Adorno in Frankfurt, who per Benjamin's last will, sent it on to Benjamin's lifelong friend Gershom Scholem, a scholar of Jewish mysticism who had emigrated from Germany to Mandatory Palestine in 1923.
Swamp Legend (1919)
Swamp Legend ("Sumpflegende") is a 1919 oil-on-cardboard painting by Swiss-German painter Paul Klee. It has been in the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus in Munich since 1982, but its ownership was disputed due to its provenance. The painting was one of the works that the Nazis declared "degenerate art", and they confiscated it from the Landesmuseum Hannover in 1937. However, it was not owned by the museum, but was there on a loan from the art historian Sophie Lissitzky-Küppers. In July 2017 it became known that her heirs had reached an agreement with the city of Munich abouts its ownership.
The painting belongs to a series of "cosmic landscapes" that Klee created in a large number from 1917 to 1919, expressing a symbolic conception of nature. In abstract color spaces, dominated by sulphurous yellow and contrasted with violet, the objects arrange themselves in a naïve way. In the dreamlike scenery, the human figure itself becomes a piece of nature. As Klee wrote in his Diaries: “Earlier (even as a child) the landscape was very clear to me. A scenery for moods of the soul. Dangerous times begin now, when nature wants to swallow me, I am nothing anymore, but I have peace.”
Twittering Machine (1922)
Twittering Machine (Die Zwitscher-Maschine) is a 1922 watercolor with gouache, pen-and-ink, and oil transfer on paper by Swiss-German painter Paul Klee. Like other artworks by Klee, it blends biology and machinery, depicting a loosely sketched group of birds on a wire or branch connected to a hand-crank. Interpretations of the work vary widely: it has been perceived as a nightmarish lure for the viewer or a depiction of the helplessness of the artist, but also as a triumph of nature over mechanical pursuits. It has been seen as a visual representation of the mechanics of sound.
Originally displayed in Germany, the image was declared "degenerate art" by Adolf Hitler in 1933 and sold by the Nazi Party to an art dealer in 1939, whence it made its way to New York. One of the better known of more than 9,000 works produced by Klee, it is among the more famous images of the New York Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). It has inspired several musical compositions and, according to a 1987 magazine profile in New York, has been a popular piece to hang in children's bedrooms.
Villa R (1919)
Villa R is an oil-on-carton painting from 1919 by the Swiss-born German artist Paul Klee.
The work depicts a white villa standing beside a red road winding into the mountains beyond. A yellow full moon shines overhead. In the foreground is a large capital letter R which appears to be a part of the landscape. The red road forms a diagonal across the painting and a row of green shapes, including the green letter R, form a second intersecting diagonal. The villa is positioned at the intersection.
Ad Parnassum (1932)
Ad Parnassum is a pointillist painting by Swiss-born artist Paul Klee. The painting is currently in the Kunstmuseum Bern.
It was created while Klee was teaching at the Dusseldorf Academy following his trip to Egypt three years prior. The painting process consisted of first applying large squares of muted color on unprimed canvas. Klee then stamped on smaller squares, first in white and then in other diluted colors. The composition is dominated by the shape of a pyramid outlined with stamped lines. The structure could also be interpreted as the roof of a house or a mountain and was likely inspired by the Egyptian pyramids, the Niesen that overlooks Lake Thun in the artist's home country, and the titular Mount Parnassus. Above the pyramid to the right is a bright orange circle that represents the Sun. Klee’s use of color and geometric shapes in this piece contributes to its enigmatic and thought-provoking quality.
Highway and Byways (1929)
Highway and Byways is an oil on canvas painting by German artist Paul Klee. It belongs to the group of his numerous layer and stripe paintings and was created in January 1929 after Klee's second trip to Egypt. On loan from Werner Vowinckel, it was first exhibited in the Wallraf-Richartz Museum in Cologne and can now be seen in the Museum Ludwig, also in Cologne.
The title of the painting correspond to its structure. In the middle, runs the straight, contoured main path, divided in several parts, differentiated by color contrasts, which moves mainly between blue-orange and red-green, almost aligned with the center of the painting and tapering in layers in its horizontal internal structure. The main path is not only a path, but also a “strip of fields that is divided 45 times across to the high zone of the streaky blue and purple” horizon, rather a “painting of the sky-bearing staircase of a step pyramid”. To the left and right of it, the small-scale side paths run much more irregularly, in twisted and disordered paths, which partly end in nothing, partly also end at the same blue-gray horizon, which also seems to give the main path its clear destination.
Cat and Bird (1928)
Cat and Bird is a painting by Swiss German painter Paul Klee, created in 1928. It was made when Klee was a teacher at the Bauhaus Dessau. The painting depicts the wide face of a stylized cat with a small bird perched on its forehead. It is held in the Museum of Modern Art, in New York.
Klee made many paintings and drawings depicting cats, the most well-known being the current. The little bird on the forehead of the cat is actually meant to be inside the cat's head; it can be assumed that he is dreaming of a potential prey. In the painting, the bird only plays a minor role; the undisputed main character is the cat, whose face overwhelmingly dominates the format. Domestic cats often like to sit in tight spaces. His facial expression is characterized by a frightening alertness, shown in the open eyes with the typical vertical pupils of the cats, but also by his calmness. Klee's coloring is muted in this painting, from pink to light brown, as well as bluish, green and violet areas, a warm color scheme that corresponds to the nature of warmth-loving domestic cats. Only the tip of the nose appears in bright red, in the shape of a heart. As a well-known symbol, this heart is supposed to express a kind of “loving desire”. Klee liked cats and also kept them at home and in his studio. Above the bird is a kind of dark celestial body at the top of the picture, a motif that appears frequently in his paintings. The painter viewed the world as the model of a cosmic planetarium designed to show spiritual truths.
Camel (in Rhythmic Landscape with Trees) (1920)
Camel (in Rhythmic Landscape with Trees) (German: Kamel (in rhythmischer baumlandschaft)) is a painting by Swiss artist Paul Klee, made in 1920, in the collection of the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen in Düsseldorf, Germany.
The painting is one of the first Klee did in oils and is typical of the artist's interest in colour theory, draughtsmanship and musicality. It is also one of many images in Western art to use camels as subject matter.
Limits of Reason (1927)
Limits of Reason (German: Grenzen des Verstandes) is a 1927 painting by Paul Klee (1879–1940). It is in the permanent collection of the Pinakothek der Moderne in central Munich's Kunstareal.
The Limits of Reason was first exhibited in 1926 in Rudolf Probst's Galerie Neue Kunst Fides in Dresden, along with 99 other tempera/water colors by Klee.
Angel, Still Groping (1939)
Angel, Still Groping is a watercolor on paper painting by Swiss-German painter Paul Klee, from 1939. It is held at the Zentrum Paul Klee, in Bern.
Klee, after his dismissal in Germany as a professor, and being labeled as a “degenerate artist” following the Nazi takeover, in 1933, settled in Switzerland, his country of birth. He was also diagnosed with an incurable disease. In his final years, Klee painted 28 paintings of angels, in 1939, and another four in 1940, the year of his death. His angels are depicted with childish humour, and are not transcendent mystical beings.
Ab ovo (painting) (1917)
Ab ovo (From the egg) is a 1917 painting by Paul Klee (1879–1940) made during his time in the German Army. It is noteworthy for its sophisticated technique. It employs watercolor on gauze and paper with a chalk ground, which produces a rich texture of triangular, circular, and crescent patterns.