At the time around 1919, after his experiences in the 1st World War and his first successes in the art market, Paul Klee took up the theme of personal awareness and self-reflection in numerous self-portraits. The best known of these is the pencil drawing «Absorbtion». Klee’s theme here was less the reflection on the role of the artist and more a self depiction of an inwardly looking meditator. The artist no longer looks outwards but looks within himself. The eyes are tight shut, the ears are...

You would not want to meet Paul Klee’s "hungry girl" from 1939 in a dark alley at night. It shows a girl as a tooth-baring beast with glaring eyes. Nothing remains of a human being, let alone a sweet little girl. Its whole appearance is animal-like, even down to the little lines that Klee uses for the depiction of the pupils. Particularly in his late work Klee devoted himself extensively to everything human. He was especially interested in the very different characteristics, desires and...

The doll with purple ribbons appears strange. The androgynous mixed being seems to float in space as though directed by an invisible hand. For the first time in Klees work a humanlike figure is shown as a marionette, a motive which in his later work gained great importance. The doll behaves according to her own rules of play. Completely weightless she floats between the violet ribbons. The feet no longer function and since she no longer has any use for them, in their place two hands have...

Like Picasso, Klee was also seeking for simple, modern means of expression. But unlike Picasso, who was impressed by the magical charm of «primitive» sculpture, Klee discovered the original sources of art in his own childrens drawings. Initially he approached a reduction of form cautiously. In later years he developed an intentional naivety into his specific form of expression. In the water colour «Puppet theatre» the theatre becomes the imaginary stage of childhood. The sheet hides depths...

Paul Klee only rarely took an interest in perspectival constructions of spaces, architectures and places. Very early in his work, rather than traditional central perspective, he opted for free methods of construction which were inspired above all by Cubist ideas of composition, but which also took them further. Another source of inspiration lies in the metaphysical squares and architectures of the Italian painter Giorgio de Chirico. De Chirico’s works from the 1910s, with their empty,...

Depictions of nature appear in Paul Klee’s work from his earliest drawings in the sketchbooks of his youth to the last year of his life. Nature, growth and plants in general are a core theme in Klee’s thought and artistic work. In his 1925 essay «Ways of Studying Nature» Klee sums up his thoughts about nature: «For the artist, dialogue with nature remains an indispensable condition. The artist is a man, himself nature and part of nature in natural space.» Accordingly, for Klee, engagement...

Paul Klee drew this «Forgetful angel» in 1939 with very few pencil lines. It is one of over 35 depictions of angels from the last years of the artist’s life and work. In their appearance they correspond entirely to our traditional ideas of gentle, winged creatures, even though Klee reduces the wings to shapes narrowing to points and also sometimes makes the creatures ugly. But Klee’s angels are not figures of light or heavenly Christian creatures like those known to art history for hundreds...

This large-format drawing on packing paper is one of the last works that Paul Klee produced. Klee’s health deteriorated in early 1940. In May he went for a spa cure in Ascona, from which he did not return. Some of his works remained incomplete, or at least untitled and unnumbered, in his studio. The work posthumously entitled «Composition with Fruits» is one of these. With brush and a mixture of pigment and glue Klee draws a chaotic collection of shapes that look like fruits – apples,...

In 1938, two years before his death, Klee worked intensively with writing, characters and generally sign-like pictorial elements. He produced several works with the title «Alphabet», in which a pile of letters is scattered apparently at random over the picture surface. Klee even painted one of the alphabet paintings on newspaper. In «Beginning of a poem» Klee again distributes letters over the picture space. Towards the lower edge of the picture they seem to be more crowded, and more loosely...

This picture is the largest painting Paul Klee ever completed with the remarkable length of 176 cms. As is typical for this period Klee used newspaper which he glued onto jute. With colour paste he painted thick black stripes directly onto the paper. Only afterwards did he apply the white grounding and painted the background of pastel colours with colour paste. Also typical for the late works, the basic structure is defined by massive broad beam-like shapes. Nevertheless these still allow...

The picture «la belle jardinière», also known as «a bourgeois ghost», is a staging of surreal amusement. The schematic figure made up of red and blue lines, ironically titled by Paul Klee, the beautiful gardener in crinoline, holds in her raised left hand a bunch of flowers.The bourgeois ghost appears as a magic shining phantom, which avoids every attempt at interpretation. The lines, which give the ghost its form, appear like fluorescent red and blue light tubes, whose coloured light shines...

Even though the picture «Individualized Altimetry of Layers» was only created in 1930, it nevertheless indicates a direct relationship in its formal structure to the Egyptian water colours. The composition is divided into twelve horizontal strips, called layers by Klee, which are cut through by five vertical bars. With each step, the layers are either divided or joined back together again. The rhythm of the self-doubling layers derives from the right hand edge of the picture. This is not a...

The picture was painted in 1939, when Paul Klee was driven from his position at the Düsseldorf Academy and living again in Berne. It is not unlikely, that Klee in this picture of the high-spirited was alluding to the National Socialists in Germany. Precisely the drummer’s arms refer to Hitler, who was called the "eternal drummer".

The period in which the painting „Pomona, overripe“ was created can also be seen as a specially fertile time: As a result of his illness with progressive scleroderma Klee was only able to execute 25 works in 1936, and yet the following year was the beginning of a phase of extraordinary creative strength until his death.In the final working years fruits were amongst the most important motifs for his pictures. Klee related these concentrations of content into his own work during these years and...

Paul Klee entered the painting "The creator", in his oeuvre catalogue in 1934 under number 213. Next to the entry, he wrote: "not touched for several years". Klee frequently left paintings sitting in his studio for long periods, only to pull them out at the right time, rework them, or paint them over. He probably began this painting in his Dessau Bauhaus period and did not work on it again until he had left Germany for good to live in Switzerland.

Paul Klee returned to Berne, the city of his childhood and youth, on the 23rd December 1933. This was not done willingly, but was the enforced reaction to the accession to power by the National Socialists in Germany. From the beginning Paul and Lily Klee had observed the developments in Germany with unease. In Weimar and Dessau they were forced to experience the ugliest attacks on the Bauhaus by the National Socialists.

Until December 1918 Klee is in wartime service in Gersthofen and is not released until February 1919. During the last three war years Klee experiences a productive work phase, which stands in crass antithesis to the circumstances all around. The numerous aquarelle paintings from this time are dominated by radiant colours, which are not yet subordinate to a strict colour order. Rather they stem from sensitivity and expression.

They were made of plaster and were called "Mr. Death", "Kasperl", "Gretl, his wife", "Sepperl, his best friend", "the Devil", and "the Policeman2. With one exception, they were all destroyed in bombing in Würzburg in 1945.

The view of the city turns into a play of simple square shaped areas and shades of colour casually laid upon each other. From this point it was just a small step to the water colours of pure coloured squares which were created on his return and in memory of Kairuan. In the evening Klee noted in his diary: „Colour has caught me. I do not need to search for it. It has me for ever, I know it. That is the happy meaning of this moment: I and colour are united. I am a painter. “

In his black watercolours he laid layer after layer of black, almost transparent paint on the paper and in the superimposition of the layers he achieved a nuanced gradation of light and ark. In "Bucket and watering can", 1910, he continued this process in gentle watercolour tones. Here too he placed almost transparent layers of colours side by side and above all over one another. In the process the motif gradually disappears in the flatness of the application of paint. The outlines become...

As architecture follows certain patterns, structures and rules, mostly in geometrical forms, the structure of a painting should do the same. At first glance the motif breaks down into many coloured planes. A particular pattern slowly appears, stripes seem to run through the painting horizontally and vertically. The primary colours red, yellow and blue accentuate the composition, to which the title alludes.

Klee painted the first version in 1914, after the beginning of the First World War and the sudden death of August Macke. Until its completion in 1921 Klee reworked the picture repeatedly.

The water colour was done at the beginning of 1918, at a time when Klee, as he noted in his diary, was reading a great many poems to escape from the depressing everyday existence of his wartime service. The origin of this poem is unknown. Probably it can even be attributed to Paul Klee.

The E is interpreted partly as an abbreviation for the Bavarian town of Ebenhausen, but in Klee’s work such a pictorial element need not necessarily assume a particular meaning. By incorporating individual letters Klee complements his pictorial trove of motifs: arrows, crescent moons, individual wheels and hieroglyphics. In this way Klee was trying to prevent a single unambiguous interpretation of his work, and instead challenging the viewer with an openness and diversity of meanings.

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