Meeting Paul Klee

Quite some years ago I had the opportunity to go to the Kunstmuseum Bern.  I had just met my husband and we took a trip to Switzerland for a family wedding. I was enamored with Klee's work, bought some postcards and brought them home. I did not know at the time that this brief meeting would be the beginning of a new artistic journey for me.  I was fascinated with the colors, their depth and shape. And for some reason, I just loved those  rectangles.

Klee taught at the Bauhaus in Germany from 1921-1931 as well as his contemporaries, Johannes Itten and Josef Albers. Well, if you know any of these painters and designers, then you know where I am going . . .  deep into color, rectangles and squares.

Blühendes by Paul Klee

Paul Klee Biography Educator, Painter (1879–1940)

Paul Klee was born in Münchenbuchsee, Switzerland, on December 18, 1879. Klee participated in and was influenced by a range of artistic movements, including surrealism, cubism and expressionism. He taught art in at the Bauhaus in Germany until 1933 , when the National Socialists declared his work indecent. The Klee family fled to Switzerland, where Paul Klee died on June 29, 1940.

Klee’s artistic breakthrough came in 1914, after a trip to Tunisia. Inspired by the light in Tunis, Klee began to delve into abstract art. Returning to Munich, Klee painted his first pure abstract, In the Style of Kairouan, composed of colored rectangles and circles.


“A line is a dot that went for a walk.” —Paul Klee