Klee's
first exhibition held in Berne, in 1910, showed the influence of
Paul Cezanne, Henri
Matisse, and Vincent
van Gogh. In 1912, Klee exhibited
with the Blaue Reiter, but by the following year in a series of essays
that appeared in Zurich, he had begun to state his own personal and
spiritual approach to art. Until 1914, Klee had worked only in black
and white or in watercolors, but during that year, on a trip to Tunisia
with Macke, Klee began to see the potential of his use of color. Influenced
by Cubism and
interested in both children's and primitive art, he created small,
jewel-like paintings in a personal language. His basic themes are
nature and the man-made world of buildings and machines, and his works,
although simple in appearance, are complicated in their inner meaning.
Klee's subtly differentiated moods range from laughter to tears. His
witty titles are often as important as the paintings themselves, which
combine an economy and precision of technique with the markings of
a seemingly limitless imagination. Klee taught at the Bauhaus from
1921 to 1931 and then became professor of Fine Arts in Düsseldorf.
In 1933, nine of his works were included in the degenerate art exhibition,
the Nazis invaded his studio, and he was suspended from his post.
Luckily, Klee was able to take his paintings, drawings, and writings
with him when he sought refuge in his native Berne, where he continued
to work until his death in 1940.
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