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Paul Klee prints bring one of modern art's most playful minds into your home. Klee mixed color, line, music and a sharp sense of humor into small, inventive pictures. Our collection of art prints covers his whole career, from the Tunisian watercolors of 1914 and Bauhaus favorites like Senecio and Fish Magic to the bold, simple signs of his last years in Bern.

About Paul Klee

Paul Klee was born on 18 December 1879 in Münchenbuchsee, near Bern in Switzerland, to a music-teacher father and a singer mother. A gifted violinist, he chose art over a musical career. He trained in Munich under Heinrich Knirr and Franz von Stuck, and in 1906 married the pianist Lily Stumpf.

In Munich, Klee met Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc and August Macke and joined the Blue Rider (Der Blaue Reiter) circle. The turning point came in 1914, when he spent about three weeks in Tunisia with Macke and Louis Moilliet. He came back writing that color had taken hold of him.

After serving as a clerk during the First World War, Klee taught at the Bauhaus from 1921 to 1931, first in Weimar and then in Dessau. His Bauhaus lectures on visual form became highly influential. He moved to the Düsseldorf Academy in 1931, but the Nazis dismissed him in 1933 and he left Germany for Bern.

In 1937 the Nazis included his pictures in the "Degenerate Art" exhibition. Seriously ill from 1935, probably with scleroderma, Klee still made more than 1,200 works in 1939. He died on 29 June 1940 in Muralto, in southern Switzerland, leaving close to 9,000 works.

Style and Subjects

Klee's pictures are often small and look almost simple: a few lines, arrows, letters or musical signs standing in for people, houses and plants, set against glowing fields of color. He admired the directness of children's drawings, but his work is carefully built. Grids of colored squares, fine dotted surfaces and layered washes show how closely he studied color, and he often compared the rhythm of a painting to music.

He worked in watercolor, oil, ink and colored paste on burlap, cardboard and muslin, and invented an oil-transfer drawing method, which gives works like Twittering Machine their slightly smudged black lines. His witty, poetic titles are part of the fun. Gardens, cities, fish, birds, masks and angels appear again and again.

Famous Works

• Angelus Novus (1920), Israel Museum, Jerusalem. A small oil-transfer angel, later owned by Walter Benjamin, who called it the "angel of history."
• Senecio (1922), Kunstmuseum Basel. A mask-like face broken into flat patches of orange, pink, yellow and white.
• Twittering Machine (1922), Museum of Modern Art, New York. Sketchy birds on a wire joined to a hand crank, half creature and half machine.
• Red Balloon (1922), Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. A red circle floats above a small town of colored shapes, its thin lines suggesting a hanging basket.
• Fish Magic (1925), Philadelphia Museum of Art. Fish, flowers and a clock drift together on a dark ground, mixing water, sky and earth in one dreamlike scene.
• Ad Parnassum (1932), Kunstmuseum Bern. One of Klee's largest paintings, a mountain built from stamped and painted dots.
• Insula dulcamara (1938), Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern. His largest work by area, built from bold black signs, with a title that points to the bittersweet nightshade plant.

Decorating with Klee Prints

Many Klee originals are only about the size of a sheet of paper, so his prints suit gallery walls, hallways and smaller rooms. The Tunisian watercolors, such as Motif from Hammamet and Garden in St. Germain, have light, sunny colors that suit kitchens, breakfast nooks and bright living rooms. Darker pieces like Fish Magic and Blue Night give a bedroom or reading corner a quiet, dreamy mood.

Klee's playful side makes him a good choice for children's rooms and family spaces: Red Balloon and Kinder und Hund (Children and Dog) are gentle and cheerful. If you have a piano or a music corner, pictures with musical titles such as Ancient Sound and Polyphonic Architecture make a fitting nod to Klee the violinist. His squares and grids also sit well in modern and mid-century interiors.

FAQ

What art movement was Paul Klee part of?

Klee is linked with Expressionism, Cubism, Surrealism and abstract art, though he largely went his own way. He belonged to the Blue Rider circle in Munich before the First World War and later taught at the Bauhaus.

What is Paul Klee's most famous painting?

Twittering Machine (1922) at MoMA is probably his best-known image, along with Senecio (1922) and Fish Magic (1925).

Where can I see original Paul Klee paintings?

The Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern, opened in 2005, holds a large part of his work. Major pieces also hang in the Kunstmuseum Bern, Kunstmuseum Basel, MoMA and the Guggenheim in New York, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

How can you recognize a Paul Klee painting?

Look for a small format, simple signs such as arrows, letters and stick-like figures, and glowing color laid out in patches, grids or dots.

Was Paul Klee a musician?

Yes. He was a gifted violinist from a musical family, and his wife Lily was a pianist. Music shaped his ideas about rhythm and color and titles like Ancient Sound.

Related Artists

• Wassily Kandinsky — Blue Rider co-founder whom Klee met in Munich in 1911
• Franz Marc — Blue Rider co-founder; Klee restored Marc's painting Fate of the Animals
• August Macke — Blue Rider painter who traveled with Klee to Tunisia in 1914
• Robert Delaunay — French painter whose color contrasts influenced Klee