Paul Klee

Biography

Paul Klee was born on the 18th December 1879 in Münchenbuchsee near Bern in Switzerland. The son of musicians, it was inevitable that Klee would learn a musical instrument. Music would continue to be a major influence on his life and he eceived a thorough classical education at the Literarschule in Bern.

He graduated from school in 1898 and after a little hesitation he finally chose to study art at the Munich Academy. Whilst at the Academy, Klee studied etching and drawing under Heinrich Knirr and then painting under Franz von Stuck.

Klee’s early work was almost exclusively drawings and etchings often of a satirical nature and a series of these etchings would be exhibited in 1906 at the Munich Secession. During that same year, Klee married Lily Stumpf and they settled in Munich.

Klee soon had his first exhibitions and in 1908 he met Wassily Kandinsky, Frans Marc and Hans Arp who would turn out to a major influence on his work. Klee took part in the second ‘Blauer Reiter’ exhibition in 1912.

In 1918 he returned to Munich from his duty in the First World War to find that two of his avant-garde friends had died in the war and Kandinsky had returned to Russia. In 1920 Klee was invited to teach at the Bauhaus at Weimar where he would be reunited with Kandinsky when he joined in 1922. Klee’s teaching would include demonstrations on form and colour in relation to nature as well as metal and weaving workshops.

In 1931 Klee resigned from Bauhaus and took up a Professorship at the Düsseldorf Academy of Fine Arts; a post he would hold for only two years before the Nazi campaign brought about his dismissal.

In 1933 Klee left Germany and returned to Switzerland. During the summer of 1935 the first symptoms of Klee’s fatal illness appeared which would later be diagnosed as scleroderma. Klee remained productive in his art until he died in June 1940.