page_title: Paul Klee
section_title: Works in the Bauhaus period and in Düsseldorf
hierarchical_section_title: Paul Klee / Works / Works in the Bauhaus period and in Düsseldorf
caption_attribution_description: This file was provided to Wikimedia Commons by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum as part of a cooperation project. The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum provides images depicting artworks which are public domain or licensed under a free license.
context_page_description: Paul Klee was a Swiss-born German artist. His highly individual style was influenced by movements in art that included Expressionism, Cubism, and Surrealism. Klee was a natural draftsman who experimented with and eventually deeply explored color theory, writing about it extensively; his lectures Writings on Form and Design Theory, published in English as the Paul Klee Notebooks, are held to be as important for modern art as Leonardo da Vinci's A Treatise on Painting for the Renaissance. He and his colleague, Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky, both taught at the Bauhaus school of art, design and architecture in Germany. His works reflect his dry humor and his sometimes childlike perspective, his personal moods and beliefs, and his musicality.
context_section_description: His works during this time include Camel (in rhythmic landscape with trees) as well as other paintings with abstract graphical elements such as betroffener Ort (Affected Place) (1922). From that period he created Die Zwitscher-Maschine (The Twittering Machine), which was later removed from the National Gallery. After being named defamatory in the Munich exhibition "Entartete Kunst", the painting was later bought by the Buchholz Gallery, New York, and then transferred in 1939 to the Museum of Modern Art. The "twittering" in the title refers to the open-beaked birds, while the "machine" is illustrated by the crank. 
  The watercolor painting appears at a first glance childish, but it allows more interpretations. The picture can be interpreted as a critic by Klee, who shows through denaturation of the birds, that the world technization heist the creatures' self-determination.
  Other examples from that period are der Goldfisch (The Goldfish) from 1925, Katze und Vogel (Cat and Bird), from 1928, and Hauptweg und Nebenwege (Main Road and Byways) from 1929. Through variations of the canvas ground and his combined painting techniques Klee created new color effects and picture impressions.
  From 1916 to 1925, Klee created 50 hand puppets for his son Felix. The puppets are not mentioned in the Bauhaus catalog of works, since they were intended as private toys from the beginning. Nevertheless, they are an impressive example of Klee's imagery. He not only dealt with puppet shows privately, but also in his artistic work at the Bauhaus.
  In 1931, Klee transferred to Düsseldorf to teach at the Akademie; the Nazis shut down the Bauhaus soon after. During this time, Klee illustrated a series of guardian angels. Among these figurations is "In Engelshut" (In the Angel's Care). Its overlaying technique evinces the polyphonic character of his drawing method between 1920 and 1932.
  The 1932 painting Ad Parnassum was also created in the Düsseldorf period. 100 cm × 126 cm (39 in × 50 in) This is one of his largest paintings, as he usually worked with small formats. In this mosaic-like work in the style of pointillism he combined different techniques and compositional principles. Influenced by his trip to Egypt from 1928 to 1929, Klee built a color field from individually stamped dots, surrounded by similarly stamped lines, which results in a pyramid. Above the roof of the "Parnassus" there is a sun. The title identifies the picture as the home of Apollo and the Muses. During his 1929 travels through Egypt, Klee developed a sense of connection to the land, described by art historian Olivier Berggruen as a mystical feeling: "In the desert, the sun's intense rays seemed to envelop all living things, and at night, the movement of the stars felt even more palpable. In the architecture of the ancient funerary moments Klee discovered a sense of proportion and measure in which human beings appeared to establish a convincing relationship with the immensity of the landscape; furthermore, he was drawn to the esoteric numerology that governed the way in which these monuments had been built." In 1933, his last year in Germany, he created a range of paintings and drawings; the catalogue raisonné comprised 482 works. The self-portrait in the same year—with the programmatic title von der Liste gestrichen (removed from the list)—provides information about his feeling after losing his professorship. The abstract portrait was painted in dark colors and shows closed eyes and compressed lips, while on the back of his head there is a large "X", symbolizing that his art was no longer valued in Germany.
caption: In Engelshut, 1931, watercolor and colored inks on paper, mounted on paper, Guggenheim Museum
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