Artist

Paul Klee

1879–1940 · German, born Switzerland

Paul Klee developed one of modernism’s most elastic visual languages, moving freely between abstraction, signs, landscape, music, architecture and the imagery of childhood. Born near Bern to a musical family, he trained in Munich and became closely associated with the artists around Der Blaue Reiter. A 1914 trip to Tunisia was decisive for his understanding of color. Klee taught at the Bauhaus from 1921 to 1931 and later at the Düsseldorf Academy, where the Nazi regime dismissed him in 1933. He returned to Bern and continued working despite serious illness, producing a late body of paintings whose simplified, hieroglyphic forms carry unusual emotional force. The Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern, built around the Klee family holdings and foundation, is now the principal research center for his work.

Painting; drawing; watercolor; printmaking; art theory