Catalogue raisonne paul klee biography

With Heinz Berggruen’s gift of ninety works by Paul Klee spanning the artist’s entire career, the Metropolitan Museum has become an important center for the study of this German artist.

Klee is known for his simple stick figures, suspended fish, moon faces, eyes, arrows, and quilts of color, which he orchestrated into fantastic and childlike yet deeply meditative works.

Klee was born in 1879 in Münchenbuchsee, near Bern, Switzerland, the second child of Hans Klee, a German music teacher, and a Swiss mother.

Catalogue raisonne paul klee biography

His training as a painter began in 1898 when he studied drawing and painting in Munich for three years. By 1911, he had returned to that city, where he became involved with the German Expressionist group Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider), founded by Vasily Kandinsky and Franz Marc in 1911.

Klee and Kandinsky became lifelong friends, and the support of the older painter provided much-needed encouragement. Until then, Klee had worked in relative