Tate online - Paul Klee - Walter Benjamin - Karl Ruhrberg -
German watercolourist, painter and etcher of fantastic works, mostly small in scale; one of the most inventive artists of the 20th century. Born in Munchenbuchsee near Bern, son of a German music teacher and a Swiss mother. Went to Munich 1898-1901 to study painting; worked first with Knirr, afterwards at the Academy under Stuck. Visited Italy with the sculptor Haller 1901-2 to widen his knowledge of art, then lived 1902-6 in Bern, taking great interest in music as well as painting. His ten etched Inventions 1903-5, with satirical grotesque figures, were his first significant achievement. Settled in Munich 1906 and had his first one-man exhibition in 1910 at the Kunsthaus, Zurich. Met Kandinsky, Jawlensky, Macke and Marc in 1911 and was included in the second Blue Rider exhibition 1912. Visited Paris in 1912, met Delaunay and saw Cubist pictures. Travelled to Tunis and Kairouan with Moilliet and Macke 1914; growing interest in colour, began to work largely in watercolour. Moved to Weimar in 1921 to teach at the Bauhaus, moving with the Bauhaus to Dessau in 1926. His Pedagogical Sketchbook published 1925. Afterwards taught at Dusseldorf Academy 1931-3. Dismissed by the Nazis in 1933 and returned to Bern. Died at Muralto-Locarno. Tate online
Art does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible. Paul Klee, Inward Vision, 1958
An active line in a walk, moving freely without a goal. A walk for walk’s sake. The agent is a point that shifts position. Paul Klee, Pedagogical Sketchbook 1923
Colour has taken hold of me; no longer do I have to chase after it. I know that it has hold of me for ever. That is the significance of this blessed moment. Paul Klee on visit to Tunis 1914
A Klee painting named Angelus Novus shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing in from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. This storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress. Walter Benjamin, in Theses on the Philosophy of History, 1940
Klee’s idiosyncrasies always remained somewhat beyond the law, as it were. For ‘genius is the defect in the system’, stated the conscientious system builder, who knew that genius was the only thing that could neither be taught nor learned. Karl Ruhrberg, in Art of the 20th century I 2000