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Paul Klee (1897-1940) is one of the greatest artists of the 20th century; his work is colourful and accessible, radical and challenging. A prolific artist, he created more than 10,000 drawings, prints and paintings in his life time, as well as teaching at the progressive Bauhaus art school in Germany, and writing extensively on art & colour theory.

 

The Tate exhibition covers his 3 decades long career, from his emergence in Munich in the 1910’s, through his prolific years teaching and painting in the 1920’s, to works done at the outbreak of World War Two. The show will reunite important works that have not been exhibited together since Klee was alive, having been dispersed to collections and museums around the world, giving us a unique chance to explore how his work evolved over time.

Paul Klee: Making Visible

 

16 October 2013 – 9 March 2014

Tate Modern, London

Klee’s idiosyncratic art defies categorization into a particular art movement, though he was linked to Expressionism and Surrealism during his career.

His drawings and paintings appear simple, almost child-like, but they are fundamentally different to art produced by children. Klee’s simplicity of line and form is his way to overcome the clichés and conventions of the art that has come before him; he is finding his own visual language. Children’s art on the other hand, is simple in line and form because that is all they are capable of at that stage in their development.

 

Klee did not seek to portray visual reality in his art, but more the emotions and psychological states behind what he drew. He himself saw his paintings, drawing and prints, as allegories for deeper emotional and psychological states, in the same way dreams are the allegories of our hidden thoughts and fears.

 

Klee’s work is populated by fantastical animals, doll-like human figures, letters, numbers, hieroglyphics, and arrows, built up into his own personal universe, but its not all sunshine and flowers. Many of Klee’s works are dark and foreboding, reflecting his anxiety living and working under increasing oppression by the Nazis. He was eventually stripped of his teaching post, labeled a “degenerate artist” and went into exile in Switzerland. He suffered worsening health due to a degenerative disease, and fear and sadness come through in his later works.

 

A talented musician, his work has structures and rhythms like music, and even features musical notations in some cases. He was ambidextrous, drawing and painting with his left hand, and writing with his right; he was a poet, and studied Greek philosophy in the original Greek. Klee’s prolific productivity, the inventiveness of his imagery and his life-long experimentation with techniques, all set him apart from the vast majority of artists. His influence can be seen in later artists from Miro and Rothko, to Diebenkorn, and even Keith Haring

 

Paul Klee truly deserves to be described as a genius.

 

Words by Gordon Ross

 

Tate Modern, Bankside, London, SE1 9TG.

Opening hours: Sunday to Thursday 10:00 – 18:00. Friday & Saturday 10:00 – 22:00.

Admission: adults £16.50, concessions £14.50.

Book tickets online at www.tate.org.uk

Klee’s work is populated by fantastical animals, doll-like human figures, letters, numbers, hieroglyphics, and arrows, built up into his own personal universe...
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