Paul Klee was a famous Swiss-born German painter, printmaker, draftsman and teacher at the Bauhaus school of art. He is best known for his enigmatic works that combined linear drawing elements with color. Famous Paul Klee artworks include “Castle and Sun”, “Tod und Feuer”, “Fright of a Girl”, “Red/Green Architecture (yellow/violet gradation)”, “Tale à la Hoffmann”, “Red Balloon”, “Fish Magic”, “Highway and Byways”, “Southern (Tunisian) Gardens”, “Death for the Idea”, “New Harmony” and “Mask of Fear”.
Mini biography: Born Paul Klee on the 18th of December, 1879 in Münchenbuchsee, Switzerland. His mother Ida Marie Frick was a singer and his father Hans Wilhelm Klee was a German music teacher. Klee married the pianist Lily Stumpf in 1906 and they had one child together: Felix Paul. The artist died on the 29th of June, 1940 in Muralto, Switzerland at the age of 60. Paul Klee is buried at the Schosshalden cemetery (Schosshaldenfriedhof) in Ostermundigenstrasse, Bern, Switzerland.
List of Famous Paul Klee Art Quotes
Everything vanishes around me, and works are born as if out of the void. Ripe, graphic fruits fall off. My hand has become the obedient instrument of a remote will. Paul Klee
The conviction that painting is the right profession grows stronger and stronger in me. Writing is the only other thing I still feel attracted to. Perhaps when I am mature I shall go back to it. Paul Klee
Color has taken possession of me; no longer do I have to chase after it, I know that it has hold of me forever. Color and I are one. I am a painter. Paul Klee
I would rather cause myself trouble than become the tragicomic figure of one striving for the favor of those in power. Paul Klee
When looking at any significant work of art, remember that a more significant one probably has had to be sacrificed. Paul Klee
To emphasize only the beautiful seems to me to be like a mathematical system that only concerns itself with positive numbers. Paul Klee
I served Beauty by drawing her enemies. Paul Klee
The main thing now is not to paint precociously but to be, or at least become, an individual. The art of mastering life is the prerequisite for all further forms of expression, whether they are paintings, sculptures, tragedies, or musical compositions. Paul Klee
A drawing simply is no longer a drawing, no matter how self-sufficient its execution may be. It is a symbol, and the more profoundly the imaginary lines of projection meet higher dimensions, the better. In this sense I shall never be a pure artist as the dogma defines him. We higher creatures are also mechanically produced children of God, and yet intellect and soul operate within us in completely different dimensions. Paul Klee
Art should be like a holiday: something to give a man the opportunity to see things differently and to change his point of view. Paul Klee
Nowadays I am a very tired painter, but my skill as a draftsman holds up. Paul Klee
Thoughts about the art of portraiture. Some will not recognize the truthfulness of my mirror. Let them remember that I am not here to reflect the surface (this can be done by the photographic plate), but must penetrate inside. My mirror probes down to the heart. I write words on the forehead and around the corners of the mouth. My human faces are truer than the real ones. Paul Klee
Twenty-one years old! I never doubted my vital force. But how is it to fare with my chosen art? The recognition that at bottom I am a poet, after all, should be no hindrance in the plastic arts! And should I really have to be a poet, Lord knows what else I should desire. Certainly, a sea swells within me, for I feel. It is a hopeless state, to feel in such a way that the storm rages on all sides at once and that nowhere is a lord who commands the chaos. Paul Klee
I have a feeling that sooner or later I shall arrive at something legitimate, only I must begin, not with hypotheses, but with specific instances, no matter how minute. If I then succeed in distinguishing a clear structure, I get more from it than from a lofty imaginary construction. Paul Klee
Spring. All the things an artist must be: poet, explorer of nature, philosopher! And now I have become a bureaucrat as well as by compiling a large, precise catalogue of all my artistic productions ever since my childhood. I have left out only the school drawings, studies of nudes, etc., because they lack creative self-sufficiency. Paul Klee
His pathos is alien to me, especially in my current phase, but he is certainly a genius. Pathetic to the point of being pathological, this endangered man can endanger one who does not see through him. Here a brain is consumed by the fire of a star. It frees itself in its work just before the catastrophe. Deepest tragedy takes place here, real tragedy, natural tragedy, exemplary tragedy. Permit me to be terrified. Paul Klee
Paul Klee Portrait Painting
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Related or similar popular artists and celebrities include: Alberto Giacometti, Salvador Dali, Max Beckmann, Piet Mondrian, and other Famous Swiss Artists.
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