Paul Klee (German: [paʊ̯l ˈkleː]; 18 December 1879 – 29 June 1940) was a Swiss-born German artist. His unique style was influenced by art movements such as expressionism, cubism, and surrealism.

Klee was a skilled drawer who tried different color theories and studied them in depth. He wrote extensively about his ideas, including lectures titled Writings on Form and Design Theory (Schriften zur Form und Gestaltungslehre), which were later published in English as The Paul Klee Notebooks. These writings are considered as important for modern art as Leonardo da Vinci’s famous art book, A Treatise on Painting, was for the Renaissance.

He and his colleague, Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky, both taught at the Bauhaus school in Germany, which focused on art, design, and architecture. His works showed his sense of humor, a childlike view of the world, his personal feelings and beliefs, and his love for music.

Early life and training

Paul Klee was born in Münchenbuchsee, Switzerland, as the second child of Hans Wilhelm Klee, a German music teacher, and Ida Marie Klee, a Swiss singer. His sister, Mathilde, was born on January 28, 1876, in Walzenhausen. Their father, Hans Wilhelm Klee, was born in Tann and studied singing, piano, organ, and violin at the Stuttgart Conservatory, where he met his future wife, Ida Frick. Hans Wilhelm Klee worked as a music teacher at the Bern State Seminary in Hofwil near Bern until 1931. His parents supported and encouraged Paul’s musical talents throughout his life.

In 1880, Paul’s family moved to Bern. By 1897, after several moves, they lived in their own home in the Kirchenfeld district. From 1886 to 1890, Paul attended primary school and began violin lessons at the Municipal Music School at age 7. He showed great talent on the violin and, at age 11, was invited to play with the Bern Music Association. His interests in drawing and writing poetry were not encouraged as much as his music.

As a child, Paul followed his parents’ wishes and focused on becoming a musician. However, during his teenage years, he chose to pursue visual arts instead, partly as a form of rebellion and partly because modern music no longer interested him. He said, “I didn’t find the idea of going in for music creatively particularly attractive in view of the decline in the history of musical achievement.” Paul felt a strong connection to traditional music from the 18th and 19th centuries but wanted more freedom to explore new artistic ideas. At age 16, his landscape drawings already showed strong skill.

Around 1897, Paul began keeping a diary, which he continued until 1918. This diary helped scholars learn more about his life and thoughts. During school, he often drew in his notebooks, especially caricatures, and showed talent with lines and shapes. He barely passed his final exams at the Bern Gymnasium, where he studied humanities. He humorously noted, “After all, it’s rather difficult to achieve the exact minimum, and it involves risks.” In his free time, Paul read literature and later wrote about art theory and aesthetics.

With his parents’ reluctant approval, Paul began studying art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich in 1898 with teachers Heinrich Knirr and Franz von Stuck. He was skilled at drawing but struggled with color. He later said, “During the third winter I even realized that I probably would never learn to paint.” During this time, he spent time in pubs and had relationships with women from different backgrounds and artists’ models. In 1900, he had an illegitimate son who died shortly after birth.

After earning his Fine Arts degree, Paul traveled to Italy with a friend, Hermann Haller, from October 1901 to May 1902. They visited Rome, Florence, Naples, and the Amalfi Coast, studying the works of past artists. He said, “The Forum and the Vatican have spoken to me. Humanism wants to suffocate me.” He admired Italy’s colors but noted, “that a long struggle lies in store for me in this field of color.” For Paul, color represented hope and optimism in art, a contrast to the dark, humorous style he used in his black-and-white drawings.

Returning to Bern, Paul lived with his parents for several years and took occasional art classes. By 1905, he was experimenting with new techniques, such as drawing with a needle on a blackened glass pane, creating 57 works, including his 1906 portrait of his father. Between 1903 and 1905, he completed a series of 11 zinc-plate etchings called Inventions, his first exhibited works, which featured grotesque characters. He said, “though I’m fairly satisfied with my etchings I can’t go on like this. I’m not a specialist.” During this time, Paul still played the violin in an orchestra and wrote reviews about concerts and theater.

Marriage and early years

Paul Klee married Lily Stumpf, a pianist from Bavaria, in 1906. The couple had a son named Felix Paul the next year. They lived in a suburb of Munich. While Lily taught piano and gave some performances, Paul managed the household and focused on his artwork. His attempt to work as an illustrator for a magazine did not succeed. For the next five years, Paul’s art developed slowly. This was partly because he had to balance his time between family duties and his work, and partly because he was trying to find a new way to express himself through art. In 1910, Paul had his first solo exhibition in Bern, Switzerland. The exhibition later traveled to three other Swiss cities.

In January 1911, Paul met Alfred Kubin in Munich. Kubin encouraged Paul to illustrate Voltaire’s Candide. Paul’s drawings for the book were published in a 1920 edition edited by Kurt Wolff. Around this time, Paul’s work in graphic art, such as drawings and prints, became more frequent. Kubin admired Paul’s early use of humor and irony and became one of his first important supporters. Through Kubin, Paul met Wilhelm Hausenstein, an art critic, in 1911. That summer, Paul was a founding member and manager of the Munich artists’ group Sema. In the fall, Paul met August Macke and Wassily Kandinsky. In the winter, he joined the editorial team of Der Blaue Reiter, an art journal started by Franz Marc and Kandinsky. Paul later wrote that meeting Kandinsky made him feel a strong sense of trust, as Kandinsky had a clear and thoughtful mind. Other members of Der Blaue Reiter included Macke, Gabriele Münter, and Marianne von Werefkin. Paul quickly became one of the most important members of the group, though he was not fully accepted at first.

The first Der Blaue Reiter exhibition took place from December 18, 1911, to January 1, 1912, in Munich. Paul did not attend this event, but 17 of his graphic works were shown in a later exhibition at the Galerie Goltz from February 12 to March 18, 1912. This exhibition was called Schwarz-Weiß, meaning it only displayed black-and-white graphic art. The Der Blaue Reiter journal, which Kandinsky and Marc had planned to publish in 1911, was delayed until May 1912. It included a reproduction of one of Paul’s ink drawings, Steinhauer. At the same time, Kandinsky published his book Über das Geistige in der Kunst, which discussed spiritual ideas in art.

Being part of Der Blaue Reiter helped Paul learn new ideas about color. His trip to Paris in 1912 exposed him to Cubism, an art style that used unusual shapes, and to the early forms of abstract art. The bold colors used by artists like Robert Delaunay and Maurice de Vlaminck also influenced Paul. Instead of copying these artists, Paul began experimenting with his own color techniques using pale watercolors. He painted simple landscapes, such as In the Quarry (1913) and Houses near the Gravel Pit (1913), using blocks of color with little overlap. Paul admitted that mastering color would be a long and difficult process to reach his artistic goals. Eventually, he discovered a way to combine drawing and color effectively.

Paul’s major artistic breakthrough happened in 1914 when he visited Tunisia with August Macke and Louis Moilliet. He was deeply moved by the bright light there and wrote, “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.” This experience changed his focus from realistic art to abstract art. He began exploring the “cool romanticism of abstraction,” combining his skills in drawing with his use of color. One series of his works, called “operatic paintings,” showed his ability to blend these elements. A clear example of this new style is The Bavarian Don Giovanni (1919).

After returning home, Paul painted his first purely abstract work, In the Style of Kairouan (1914), which used colored rectangles and circles. The colored rectangle became a basic building block in his art, similar to a musical note. He combined different colored blocks to create a harmony that resembled a musical composition. His choice of colors often reflected a musical key, sometimes using pairs of complementary colors or “dissonant” colors, which showed his connection to music.

A few weeks after Paul’s trip to Tunisia, World War I began. At first, Paul was not deeply involved in the war, writing, “I have long had this war in me. That is why, inwardly, it is none of my concern.” In March 1916, Paul was conscripted as a Landsturmsoldat, a member of the reserve forces in Prussia or Imperial Germany. After completing his military training, he was assigned to work behind the front lines.

The deaths of his friends August Macke and Franz Marc in battle affected Paul deeply. He expressed his sadness through artworks like Death for the Idea (1915), a series of pen and ink lithographs about war.

In August 1916, Paul was transferred to an aircraft maintenance company in Oberschleissheim, where he worked on restoring aircraft camouflage and transporting planes. In January 1917, he was moved to the Royal Bavarian flying school in Gersthofen, where he worked as a clerk until the war ended. This job allowed him to live in a small room near the barracks and continue painting.

Paul kept creating art throughout the war and was able to display his work in several exhibitions. By 1917, his art was selling well, and critics praised him as one of the best new German artists. One of his notable works from this time is Ab ovo (1917), which used watercolor on gauze and paper with a chalk ground to create a textured surface with triangular, circular, and crescent patterns. Another important piece, Warning of the Ships (1918), combined color and symbolic images on a muted background, showing his ability to mix different artistic techniques.

Mature career

In 1919, Klee tried to get a teaching job at the Academy of Art in Stuttgart, but he was not hired. Later, he signed a three-year contract with dealer Hans Goltz, who had a powerful art gallery. This helped Klee gain more attention and achieve some success in selling his work. In 1920, a large exhibition featuring over 300 of Klee’s works was held, which was an important event.

From January 1921 to April 1931, Klee taught at the Bauhaus, a famous art school. He worked in workshops for bookbinding, stained glass, and mural painting and had two studios. In 1922, Kandinsky joined the Bauhaus staff, and their friendship continued. That same year, the first Bauhaus exhibition and festival took place, and Klee designed some of the advertising materials for the event. Klee believed that different ideas and opinions at the Bauhaus could lead to creative achievements.

Klee was also part of a group called Die Blaue Vier (The Blue Four), which included Kandinsky, Lyonel Feininger, and Alexej von Jawlensky. This group was formed in 1923 with the help of Galka Scheyer, who later arranged exhibitions of their work in the United States. In 1924, Klee had his first art shows in Paris, where he was well-received by French Surrealists. In 1928, Klee visited Egypt, but he found it less inspiring than Tunisia. In 1929, the first detailed book about Klee’s work was published by Will Grohmann.

From 1931 to 1933, Klee taught at the Düsseldorf Academy. A Nazi newspaper criticized him, saying he was a "Galician Jew" despite claiming to be an Arab. His home was searched by the Gestapo, and he was fired from his job. His self-portrait titled Struck from the List (1933) marked this difficult time. In 1933–34, Klee had art shows in London and Paris, where he finally met Pablo Picasso, whom he admired. The Klee family moved to Switzerland in late 1933.

During this time, Klee created many works. His painting Ad Parnassum (1932) is considered his masterpiece and best example of his pointillist style, which uses small dots of color. He made nearly 500 works in 1933, his last year in Germany. However, in 1933, Klee began showing symptoms of a disease later diagnosed as scleroderma, which made swallowing difficult. His health worsened, and his art from this time shows the effects of his illness. In 1936, he created only 25 paintings. Later in the 1930s, his health improved slightly, and visits from Kandinsky and Picasso encouraged him. He used simpler, larger designs and heavier lines with geometric shapes and bold colors in his later years. In 1939, he created over 1,200 works, the most in a single year of his career.

In 1937, seventeen of Klee’s paintings were included in an exhibition called "Degenerate Art" by the Nazis. Additionally, 102 of his works in public collections were taken by the Nazis.

Death

In 1935, two years after moving to Switzerland and working in difficult conditions, Paul Klee developed scleroderma, an autoimmune disease that causes connective tissue to harden. He experienced pain that is shown in his final artworks. In his last months, he created 50 drawings of angels. One of his last paintings, Death and Fire, shows a skull in the center with the German word for death, "Tod," written on its face. He died in Muralto, Locarno, Switzerland, on June 29, 1940, without becoming a Swiss citizen, even though he was born in the country. His artwork was considered too revolutionary and even unacceptable by Swiss officials, but they agreed to accept it six days after his death. His legacy included about 9,000 works of art. The words on his tombstone, written by his son Felix, read: "I cannot be grasped in the here and now, for my dwelling place is as much among the dead as the yet unborn. Slightly closer to the heart of creation than usual, but still not close enough." He was buried at Schosshaldenfriedhof, Bern, Switzerland.

Style and methods

Paul Klee was connected to several art movements, including Expressionism, Cubism, Futurism, Surrealism, and Abstraction. However, his artwork is hard to place into a single category. He usually worked alone, not with other artists, and adapted new artistic trends in his own unique way. He was creative and used many different materials in his art, such as oil paint, watercolor, ink, pastel, etching, and others. He often mixed these materials together in one piece. He used surfaces like canvas, burlap, muslin, linen, gauze, cardboard, metal foils, fabric, wallpaper, and newsprint. His techniques included spray paint, applying paint with a knife, stamping, glazing, and impasto. He also combined different media, such as oil paint with watercolor, watercolor with pen and India ink, and oil with tempera.

Paul Klee was naturally skilled at drawing and, through long practice, became highly skilled at using color and light. Many of his works show these abilities. He used a wide range of color palettes, from nearly all one color to works with many bright colors. His art often has a delicate, childlike look and is usually small in size. He frequently used shapes like circles and squares, as well as grids, letters, and numbers, often combining them with playful images of animals and people. Some of his works were completely abstract. Many of his pieces and their titles show his sense of humor and reflect his changing moods. They often include references to poetry, music, and dreams, and sometimes include words or musical notes. His later works are known for having thin, spider-like symbols that resemble ancient writing. In 1921, Rainer Maria Rilke wrote about Klee, saying, "Even if you hadn’t told me he plays the violin, I would have guessed that on many occasions his drawings were transcriptions of music."

Pamela Kort noted, "Klee's 1933 drawings offer viewers a rare chance to see an important part of his artistic style that has not been widely recognized: his long-term interest in using parody and humor. This is especially meaningful for those who may not know that Klee’s art also has political themes."

Among his few three-dimensional works are hand puppets he made between 1916 and 1925 for his son, Felix. Klee did not consider these puppets part of his main body of work, nor did he include them in his complete list of works. Thirty of the preserved puppets are kept at the Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern.

Poetry

Paul Klee did not publish any poetry during his lifetime, but he wrote and revised many rough drafts in his diary and in a blue notebook he called Geduchte (Pomes), which he named with a negative tone. After Klee died, some of his poems were published in German in 1960. Later, they were translated into English by Anselm Hollo in 1962 and by Harriett Watts in 1974. In 2006, K. Porter Aichele wrote a study that explored how Klee’s poetry and painting influenced each other. Klee’s translators noted that Klee had a strong skill with "line" and a deep interest in dance and play, combining these qualities in both his poetry and art. They also said that his poems, like many of his paintings, needed to be small and complete on their own.

Klee’s creative methods in painting and drawing are described in his poetry. For example, he wrote short lines like "Has inspiration/ eyes, or does she/ walk in her sleep?" and "The practised hand/ often knows it better than the head." Aichele observed that Klee included poems in his drawings and paintings throughout his career. One example is "Once emerged from the grey of night" (Einst dem Grau der Nacht enttaucht, 1918), which Aichele called "pictorial writing" (Bilderschrift). In this work, the title comes from the first line of a poem at the top of the picture, followed by colored squares with cut-up letters.

Another example is "Tree nursery" (1929), which includes simple, banded lines of writing. Aichele explained that the meaning of this piece depends on the viewer’s ability to connect the visual and written elements, which are very different. Over the next decade, Klee focused more on showing poetic symbols that represented the stories they were part of. Aichele noted that these symbols were connected to intellectual movements of the time, which eventually led to the development of Concrete Poetry and, later, Visual Poetry.

Graphic works

Paul Klee's early drawings, which his grandmother encouraged, were included in his complete list of works. During his time in Bern, Klee created 19 etchings. Ten of these were made between 1903 and 1905 as part of a series called "Inventions." These works were displayed in June 1906 at an art exhibition in Munich, marking Klee's first public showing as a painter. Klee removed one of the "Inventions," titled Pessimistic Allegory of the Mountain, from the series in February 1906. Some of his satirical etchings, such as Virgin on the Tree/Virgin (Dreaming) (1903) and Aged Phoenix (1905), were described by Klee as "surrealistic outposts." The etching Virgin on the Tree was inspired by a painting titled Le cattive madri (1894) by Giovanni Segantini. This work was influenced by the strange and exaggerated poetry of Alfred Jarry, Max Jacob, and Christian Morgenstern. It shows a type of sadness common in art from the late 1800s. The sixth etching in the "Inventions" series, Two Men, Supposing the Other to Be in a Higher Position (1903), shows two naked men, likely Emperor Wilhelm II of Germany and Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria, recognizable by their hairstyles and beards. Because they are not wearing clothing or symbols of rank, the men are unsure whether their formal greeting is correct. They bow to each other, assuming the other might be of higher status.

• Dame mit Sonnenschirm, 1883–1885, pencil on paper on cardboard, Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern
• Hilterfingen, 1895, ink on paper, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
• Third Invention: Virgin on the Tree, 1903, etching, Museum of Modern Art, New York
• Sixth Invention: Two Men, Supposing the Other to Be in a Higher Position, Meet, 1903, etching, Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern
• Aged Phoenix, 1905, etching, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York

In 1905, Klee began using a new technique: scratching images onto a blackened glass panel with a needle. This method allowed him to create about 57 Verre églomisé pictures, including Scene on a Garden (1905) and Portrait of a Father (1906). These works combined painting and scratching. Klee's early work as a solitary artist ended in 1911, the year he met the artist Alfred Kubin and joined the group known as the Blaue Reiter.

During a 12-day trip to Tunis in April 1914, Klee created watercolor paintings with fellow artists Macke and Moilliet. These works used the bright colors and light of North Africa, similar to the styles of Paul Cézanne and Robert Delaunay. The goal was not to copy nature but to create compositions that mirrored nature’s patterns, as seen in In the Houses of Saint-Germain and Streetcafé. Klee used a grid-like structure to break scenes into colored sections. He also made abstract works, such as Abstract and Colored Circles Tied Through Inked Ribbons. Klee never stopped drawing from real objects; he never completely moved away from them. It took over ten years for Klee to develop his own unique style through experiments with color, inspired by the vibrant colors of the East.

• Fenster und Palmen, 1914, watercolor on paper on cardboard, Kunsthaus Zürich, Zurich
• In the Houses of Saint-Germain, 1914, watercolor on paper on cardboard, Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern
• Föhn im Marc’schen Garten, 1915, watercolor on paper on cardboard, Lenbachhaus, Munich
• Acrobats, 1915, watercolor, pastel, and ink on paper, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York

The painting Föhn at Marc's Garden (1915) was created after Klee’s trip to Turin. It shows how Klee used color in a way influenced by Macke and Delaunay. Although the garden is clearly visible, the painting moves closer to abstraction. In his diary, Klee wrote about his feelings during this time.

Under the influence of his military service, Klee painted Velvetbells in 1917. This work used graphic symbols, plant shapes, and fantastical forms, and it was a precursor to his later art. For the first time, birds appeared in his paintings, such as in Flower Myth (1918), which showed planes he saw in Gersthofen and photographs of plane crashes.

In the 1918 watercolor Einst dem Grau der Nacht enttaucht, Klee included letters in small, color-separated squares. He used silver paper to separate the first line of text from the second. The words were written by hand on the cardboard backing of the painting. Klee used the color style of the artist Marc, not Delaunay, even though their painting styles were different. Klee’s art dealer, Herwarth Walden, called this a "changing of the guard" in Klee’s work. From 1919 onward, Klee often used oil paints, combining them with watercolors and colored pencils. The painting Villa R (1919) includes real elements like the sun, moon, mountains, trees, and buildings, as well as surreal and emotional symbols.

Other works from this time include Camel (in Rhythmic Landscape with Trees) and Affected Place (1922), which used abstract graphical elements. The Twittering Machine (1920) was later removed from the National Gallery. After being labeled as "degenerate art" in a Munich exhibition, the painting was bought by the Buchholz Gallery in New York and later moved to the Museum of Modern Art in 1939. The title refers to birds with open beaks, and the "machine" is shown as a crank.

At first glance, The Twittering Machine looks simple, but it has deeper meanings. Klee may have been criticizing the loss of freedom for living creatures due to the rise of technology.

Other works from this period include The Goldfish (1925), Cat and Bird (1928), and Main Road and Byways (1929). Klee used different painting techniques and variations in the background of his canvases to create new color effects and visual impressions.

Between 1916 and 1925, Klee made 50 hand puppets for his son Felix. These puppets were not included in the

Reception and legacy

Oskar Schlemmer, a future artist colleague of Paul Klee at the Bauhaus, wrote in his September 1916 diary, "Klee's act is very prestigious. In a minimum of one line he can reveal his wisdom. He is everything; profound, gentle, and many more of the good things, and this because: he is innovative."

Novelist and friend Wilhelm Hausenstein wrote in his work Über Expressionismus in der Malerei (On Expressionism in Painting), "Maybe Klee's attitude is in general understandable for musical people—how Klee is one of the most delightsome violinist playing Bach and Händel, who ever walked on earth. […] For Klee, the German classic painter of the Cubism, the world music became his companion, possibly even a part of his art; the composition, written in notes, seems to be not dissimilar."

When Klee visited the Paris surrealism exhibition in 1925, Max Ernst was impressed by his work. His partially morbid motifs appealed to the surrealists. André Breton helped develop surrealism and renamed Klee's 1912 painting Zimmerperspektive mit Einwohnern (Room Perspective with People) to chambre spirit in a catalogue. Critic René Crevel called the artist a "dreamer" who "releases a swarm of small lyrical louses from mysterious abysses." Paul Klee's confidante Will Grohmann argued in the Cahiers d'art that he "stands definitely well solid on his feet. He is by no means a dreamer; he is a modern person, who teaches as a professor at the Bauhaus." Whereupon Breton, as Joan Miró remembers, was critical of Klee: "Masson and I have both discovered Paul Klee. Paul Éluard and Crevel are also interested in Klee, and they have even visited him. But Breton despises him."

The art of mentally ill people inspired Klee as well as Kandinsky and Max Ernst, after Hans Prinzhorn's book Bildnerei der Geisteskranken (Artistry of the Mentally Ill) was published in 1922. In 1937, some papers from Prinzhorn's anthology were presented at the National Socialist propaganda exhibition "Entartete Kunst" (Degenerate Art) in Munich, with the purpose of defaming the works of Kirchner, Klee, Nolde, and other artists by likening them to the works of the insane.

In 1949, Marcel Duchamp commented on Paul Klee: "The first reaction in front of a Klee painting is the very pleasant discovery, what everyone of us could or could have done, to try drawing like in our childhood. Most of his compositions show at the first glance a plain, naive expression, found in children's drawings. […] At a second analysis one can discover a technique, which takes as a basis a large maturity in thinking. A deep understanding of dealing with watercolors to paint a personal method in oil, structured in decorative shapes, let Klee stand out in the contemporary art and make him incomparable. On the other side, his experiment was adopted in the last 30 years by many other artists as a basis for newer creations in the most different areas in painting. His extreme productivity never shows evidence of repetition, as is usually the case. He had so much to say, that a Klee never became another Klee."

One of Klee's paintings, Angelus Novus, was the object of an interpretative text by German philosopher and literary critic Walter Benjamin, who purchased the painting in 1921. In his "Theses on the Philosophy of History," Benjamin suggests that the angel depicted in the painting might be seen as representing the angel of history.

Another aspect of his legacy, and one demonstrating his multi-faceted presence in the modern artistic imagination, is his appeal for those interested in the history of the algorithm as exemplified by Homage to Paul Klee by computer art pioneer Frieder Nake.

Unlike his taste for adventurous modern experiment in painting, Klee, though musically talented, was attracted to older traditions of music; he appreciated neither composers of the late 19th century, such as Wagner, Bruckner, and Mahler, nor contemporary music. Bach and Mozart were for him the greatest composers; he most enjoyed playing the works by the latter.

Klee's work has influenced composers such as Argentinian Roberto García Morillo in 1943, with Tres pinturas de Paul Klee. Others include the American composer David Diamond in 1958, with the four-part Opus Welt von Paul Klee (World of Paul Klee). Gunther Schuller composed Seven Studies on Themes of Paul Klee in the years 1959/60, consisting of Antique Harmonies, Abstract Trio, Little Blue Devil, Twittering Machine, Arab Village, An Eerie Moment, and Pastorale. The Spanish composer Benet Casablancas wrote Alter Klang, Impromptu for Orchestra after Klee (2006); Casablancas is author also of the Retablo on texts by Paul Klee, Cantata da Camera for Soprano, Mezzo, and Piano (2007). In 1950, Giselher Klebe performed his orchestral work Die Zwitschermaschine with the subtitle Metamorphosen über das Bild von Paul Klee at the Donaueschinger Musiktage. 8 Pieces on Paul Klee is the title of the debut album by the Ensemble Sortisatio, which includes works inspired by Klee's art.

Since 1995, the "Paul Klee-Archiv" (Paul Klee archive) of the University

Publications

• Jardi, Enric (1991). Paul Klee. Published by Rizzoli Intl Pubns. ISBN 0-8478-1343-6
• Kagan, Andrew (1993). Paul Klee at the Guggenheim Museum (exhibition catalogue). Introduction by Lisa Dennison. Essay by Andrew Kagan. 208 pages. Available in English and Spanish editions. ISBN 978-0-89207-106-7
• Cappelletti, Paolo (2003). L'inafferrabile visione. Pittura e scrittura in Paul Klee (in Italian). Published by Jaca Book in Milan. ISBN 88-16-40611-9
• Partsch, Susanna (2007). Klee (reissue) (in German). Published by Benedikt Taschen in Cologne. ISBN 978-3-8228-6361-9
• Rudloff, Diether (1982). Unvollendete Schöpfung: Künstler im zwanzigsten Jahrhundert (in German). Published by Urachhaus. ISBN 978-3-87838-368-0
• Baumgartner, Michael; Klingsöhr-Leroy, Cathrin; Schneider, Katja (2010). Franz Marc, Paul Klee: Dialog in Bildern (in German) (1st ed.). Published by Nimbus Kunst und Bücher in Wädenswil. ISBN 978-3-907142-50-9
• Giedion-Welcker, Carola (1967). Klee (in German). Published by Rowohlt in Reinbek. ISBN 978-3-499-50052-7
• Glaesemer, Jürgen; Kersten, Wolfgang; Traffelet, Ursula (1996). Paul Klee: Leben und Werk (in German). Published by Hatje Cantz in Ostfildern. ISBN 978-3-7757-0241-6
• Rümelin, Christian (2004). Paul Klee: Leben und Werk. Published by C.H. Beck in Munich. ISBN 3-406-52190-8
• Lista, Marcella (2011). Paul Klee, 1879-1940: polyphonies. Published by Actes Sud in Arles. ISBN 978-2330000530

• 1922 Beiträge zur bildnerischen Formlehre (Contributions to a pictorial theory of form). Part of his 1921–22 lectures at the Bauhaus
• 1923 Wege des Naturstudiums (Ways of Studying Nature). 4 pages. Published in the catalogue for the Erste Bauhaus Ausstellung (First Bauhaus Exhibition) in Summer 1923. Also published in Paul Klee Notebooks, Volume 1
• 1924 Über moderne Kunst (On Modern Art). Lecture given at Paul Klee’s exhibition at the Kunstverein in Jena on 26 January 1924
• 1924 Pädagogisches Skizzenbuch (Pedagogical Sketchbook)
• 1949 Documente und Bilder aus den Jahren 1896–1930 (Documents and images from the years 1896–1930). Published by Benteli in Berne
• 1956 Graphik (Graphics). Published by Klipstein & Kornfeld in Berne
• 1956 Schriften zur Form und Gestaltungslehre (Writings on form and design theory). Edited by Jürg Spiller. English edition: "Paul Klee Notebooks." Volume I: Das bildnerische Denken (the creative thinking). 572 pages. English translation: "The thinking eye" (1964). Volume 2: Unendliche Naturgeschichte (Infinite Natural History). English translation: "The Nature of Nature"
• 1964 The Diaries of Paul Klee 1898–1918. Edited by Felix Klee. Published by University of California in Berkeley
• 1976 Schriften, Rezensionen und Aufsätze. Edited by Ch. Geelhaar. Published in Köln

• 1960 Gedichte (poems). Edited by Felix Klee. Published in Zurich
• 1962 Some poems by Paul Klee (translated by Anselm Hollo). Published by Scorpion Press in London
• 1974 Three Painter-Poets, Arp/Schwitters/Klee, Selected Poems (translated by Harriett Watts). Published by Penguin Modern European Poets. ISBN 978-0-14-042173-6
• 2006 Paul Klee, Poet/Painter.

Podcasts

• Interview with Fabienne Eggelhöfer (Head curator of Zentrum Paul Klee, Berne) about Paul Klee's life and art on the Bauhaus Faces podcast, host: Dr. Anja Guttenberger, released on 25 July, 2025
• Paul Klee's Playlist, podcast about Klee's relationship with music, host: Zentrum Paul Klee, released in 2025
• Mapping Klee, podcast about Paul Klee's journeys, host: Zentrum Paul Klee, released in 2020