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The Life and Legacy of Paul Klee
One of the most influential artists of the 20th century, Swiss painter Paul Klee authored an iconography of forms, motifs and personal mythology whose sheer originality defies classification. This highlight from one of the artist’s most important creative periods sheds light on his brilliant career and lasting legacy.

A Formative Relationship
Klee first came to befriend Wassily Kandinsky in 1911, when the two were neighbors in Munich, and the older artist was in part responsible for introducing Klee to the work of the international avant-garde. It was through Kandinsky that Klee became involved with Der Blaue Reiter (“The Blue Rider”) group, whose members shared a belief in the spiritual potential of art. Klee contributed to the group’s second exhibition in 1912, and was involved with them until the onset of World War I caused the group to disband.

The Bauhaus Years
Founded in 1919 by architect Walter Gropius, the radically innovative Bauhaus school in Weimar, Germany adopted an interdisciplinary approach to art, with a strong emphasis on architecture and design. Gropius invited Klee to join the school as a professor in 1920, where he worked alongside luminaries like Kandinsky, Josef Albers and Lyonel Feininger. The ten years spent teaching at the Bauhaus had a significant impact on Klee’s work during the 1920s. While retaining the influences of Cubist structure and principles of color theory, he investigated the spatial possibilities of the picture plane in new ways, and increasingly involved architectural forms in his works during this period. Klee produced an extraordinary volume of works during this period, among them the striking Structural II, offered in our forthcoming Impressionist/Modern Works on Paper auction.

A Very Fine Technique
A firm, logical schemata is apparent many of the works from the 1920s, among them Structural II. The second in a series of “structural” compositions, Klee used a very fine brush to create a densely patterned network of abstract shapes, layering brightly colored lines against a rich black ground. Architectural forms denoting castles and gardens are integrated within the complex structure of color planes, creating the whimsical quality of a child’s drawing or a fantasy landscape.