Paul Klee: The Color and Spirit of Modern Expression

A pioneering and imaginative artist of early 20th-century modernism, Paul Klee excelled in experimenting with color and form. His innovative visual language, cultivated by a melding of abstract practices borrowed from Cubism to Surrealism, revealed parallel passions in artistic practice and theory.

But was he a Cubist? An Expressionist? A Symbolist? The brilliance of Klee was that he was all and none of these categories: his rebellious style refused the limitations of one artistic category and continues to compel audiences and collectors today.  

In this article we dive into the story of the artist himself to better appreciate how his paintings showcase an unrestrained spirit of modern expression. In addition to a brief biography of the artist, we’ll also showcase some of the variety of his work via noteworthy examples as we come to terms with Paul Klee’s artistic magic. 

Paul Klee: The Formative Years

Klee was born in the late 1870s outside of Bern, Switzerland, to a family of musicians. The son of a music teacher and a professional singer, Klee also studied music as a child. It was perhaps this early lyrical exposure that helped cultivate his capabilities with a painterly application of color.

These nuanced techniques, however, proved challenging for Klee as a young student at Munich’s Academy of Fine Arts after he enrolled in 1898. It was not the rigor of the training at the prestigious school that challenged Klee; on the contrary, his earliest drawings and etchings like Virgin in a Tree (Jungfrau im Baum) (1903) showcase that Klee was a naturally talented draftsperson, skills that assured success in the academic system. Rather, Klee bristled at the adherence of his mentors to traditional artistic methods and approaches. 

Paul Klee: The Innovator

Instead, Klee wished to push past traditional conventions and embraced working across media. Fueling his interest in these avant-garde approaches was his friendship with fellow artistic revolutionary Wassily Kandinsky, whom he met in late 1911 when he joined Der Blau Reiter as an almanac editor. His connection with this innovative circle, particularly Kandinsky who himself advocated for the spiritual harmony to be found in non-representational art, helped cultivate Klee’s own theories for artistic creativity.

Around this same time Klee was first exposed to the art of Pablo Picasso.  At the time, Picasso was an emerging figure who was still forming a style that would become known as Cubism, but even in this movement’s infancy Klee was compelled. In addition to traveling the world – documented in works like Scene from Kairouan (Scene aus Kairuan) (1914) –  he spent the following years nurturing his fascination with color theory and formal decomposition, exemplified in works like Ab Ovo (1917), where watercolor applied through gauze creates a powerful illusion, before he enlisted to fight in World War I.

Upon his return from war, Klee revived his practice and poured these same fascinations into his time working as an instructor at Walter Gropius’ Bauhaus for most of the 1920s.  There he was surrounded by some of the leading modernists of the age, including Kandinsky who joined the faculty for a brief period, but disruption was on the horizon. The rise of the Nazi party would force the Bauhaus to shutter in 1933 and label artists like Klee and his contemporaries as “degenerate”. Though Klee had moved on to teaching at the Dusseldorf Academy by that time, he nevertheless felt Nazi persecution so intensely that he fled to Switzerland where he worked for the remainder of his life.

The Art of Paul Klee

Perhaps the multifaceted nature of Paul Klee’s painterly style was the most captivating quality to his vast body of work, Weaving together diverse styles and perspectives, Klee painted unfettered to one palette or formal element. Rather, he allowed his work to explore aspects of movements as different as: 

Cubism

Immediately evocative of Picasso’s paintings, works like Senecio (1922) reveal Klee’s capacity to absorb Cubist technique. In this warm work, a harlequin-like face emerges via planes of energized yellows and oranges. Each facet’s contours are visually legible, yet Klee also applied the paint with such translucency that these borders also melt into one another to give the painting an overall playful air accentuated by the figure’s almost mischievous expression.

Whereas Senecio suggests these subtleties, other Klee paintings, like Corral and Landscape (Choral und Landschaft) (1921) explore even more geometric precision in the division of elements as a patchwork of dark and intense colors carves up the compositional space. Klee tempers this intensity with additions, like wispy, organic pine trees, that both add an air of fun while also creating a visual conversation between styles. 

Mysticism/Surrealism

Inspired by artists like Kandinsky who sensed a spiritual energy in painting as well as the artists of Surrealism who probed the subconscious mind for novel expressive modes, Paul Klee integrated a similar essence into his abstract paintings. Works like Fish Magic (1925), for example, teems with fantastical and colorful creatures that are simultaneously inviting and alarming such that this painting almost reads like a 20th-century echo of Hieronymus Bosch’s famous sixteenth-century works. By conjuring creatures that recall but do not mirror nature, Klee cultivated a contemplative space, where color and form could carry the viewer further into the fantasy. 

Abstraction

In paintings like Castle and Sun (1928) Klee took the geometric precision of Cubist to new heights by breaking the entire composition into tiles of vibrant colors.  These forms come together to suggest a cityscape or town view, but even more captivating than discerning this implied architecture is exploring this rich kaleidoscope of hues that almost seem to vivify the imaginative composition. The same can be sensed in The Coast of Provence (Côte de Provence) (1927) where Klee translated a real seascape into a carefully choreographed composition filled with planes of color and pattern.  

Pointillism

Klee’s Ad Parnassum (1932) further exemplifies the artist’s spirit of experimentation and imagination as it invokes the Pointillist style pioneered in the late 19th century among the French Post-Impressionists like George Seurat and Camille Pissarro.  Built from successive layers of squares – first painted, then subsequent layers stamped – Ad Parnassum seems Klee’s homage to antiquity. The painting’s name refers to the mythical locale of Parnassus, home to Apollo and the Muses, while the triangular form that dominates the painting has been interpreted as a reference to Klee’s earlier travels through Egypt. Klee continued to work in this Pointillist technique following his escape to Switzerland, and it is a work in this meticulous style – Tänzerin (1932) – that currently holds the record sales price for Klee paintings.

The Boundless Beauty of Paul Klee

Throughout his career, Paul Klee set out to challenge artistic conventions. The result of this drive was an enormous body of work that defies categorization. Paul Klee’s work is simply too varied to be classified into one style, thus positioning him as one of the most versatile artistic voices of the 20th century. He inspired his students and other art theorists by serving as a beacon of art’s ability to foster pure creativity, and he continues to motivate collectors today who can appreciate that boundless search for novelty within the landscapes of both the natural world and within our inner minds.