18 December
Paul Klee, born 18 December, son of a singer (his mother) and a pianist (his father), was supposed to become a musician, and indeed proved to be a gifted violinist when he was only 7 years of age. However, he was convinced that music was no exciting enough because of the “decline in the history of musical achievement” (!).
He decided to become a painter instead. It was indeed a very exciting period to be an artist, with many movements and new concepts, and Klee explored them all. From Der Blaue Reiter to the Bauhaus, he was influenced by Expressionism, Cubism, Constructivism, Primitivism and Surrealism, he even tried Pointillism.
Klee began studying art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. In the beginning he excelled at drawing, where he was a natural, but he seemed to lack any colour sense. He had to travel south, Italy, Tunisia Egypt, to really “see” colour. And it became his signature. He deeply explored colour theory and even wrote about it extensively.
He was very prolific. In his life Klee created an incredibly large number of graphics, drawings and paintings. In his catalogue of works, which he built himself from 1911 until his death in 1940, he listed several thousand works.
However, probably his musical sensibility remained is his most recognisable trait. His most praised paintings are those composed of coloured rectangles and a few circles. The coloured rectangle became his basic building block, what some scholars associate with a musical note, which Klee combined with other coloured blocks to create a harmony analogous to a musical composition. His selection of a particular colour palette was the musical key.
The period in which he lived was very exciting but doomed to finish in the tragedy of World War II.
Also his art was branded as degenerate art by the Nazis and he had to leave Germany and his job.
Not the first thing that comes to your mind when you look at his paintings.
Luckily many things have changed since then.
