Paul Klee
Paul Klee
Paul Kleewas a Swiss-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...
NationalitySwiss
ProfessionPainter
Date of Birth18 December 1879
CityMunchenbuchsee, Switzerland
CountrySwitzerland
I want to be as though new-born, knowing nothing, absolutely nothing... then I want to do something modest; to work out by myself a tiny, formal motive, one that my pencil will be able to hold without technique.
He neither serves nor rules, he transmits. His position is humble and the beauty at the crown is not his own. He is merely a channel.
I want to be as though new-born, knowing nothing, absolutely nothing about Europe.
It is the artistic mission to penetrate as far as may be toward that secret ground where primal law feeds growth.
In the final analysis, a drawing simply is no longer a drawing, no matter how self-sufficient its execution may be. It is a symbol, and the more profoundly the imaginary lines of projection meet higher dimensions, the better.
There is no substitute for intuition.
My hand has become the obedient instrument of a remote will.
For the understanding of a picture a chair is needed. Why a chair? To prevent the legs, as they tire, from interfering with the mind
My hand is entirely the implement of a distant sphere. It is not my head that functions but something else, something higher, something somewhere remote. I must have great friends there, dark as well as bright. They are all very kind to me.
One does not lash hat lies at a distance. The foibles that we ridicule must at least be a little bit our own. Only then will the work be a part of our own flesh. The garden must be weeded.
I want to be as though newborn. To be almost primitive.
Everything vanishes round me and good works rise from me of their own accord.
It is a great difficulty and a great necessity to have to start with the smallest.
The longer a line, the more of the time element it contains. Distance is time whereas a surface is apprehended more in terms of the moment.