Paul Klee — Construction of Mystery

Paul Klee was one of the most influential masters at the Bauhaus German art school in Weimar and Dessau, where he grappled with the challenges of a technologized, rational world. That is the focus of a comprehensive exhibition of Klee works, mainly from the 1920 and 1930s, entitled "Paul Klee. Construction of Mystery." at Munich's Pinakothek museum.

"Color and I are as one," Paul Klee wrote in his diary after visiting Tunisia in 1914. "I am a painter." The light and the colors in that part of the world and the full moon inspired the 1915 painting "Moon Rising." The moon is in fact a feature in many of Klee's paintings, though it is a red circle in his graphic works.

Klee painted the watercolor "Above Mountain Summit" in 1917, in the midst of WWI. As an artist he felt it was his task to turn chaos into order, akin to divine creation. The above watercolor, with its stark shapes, symbolizes Klee's longing for the mountains, and ultimately the Divine.

Paul Klee used self-portraits to depict himself as a "thinking artist," in the above case with his eyes clamped shut, and no ears. The 1919 lithograph exudes an air of inner calm, and is the type of artwork that cemented Klee's reputation as unworldly and mysterious. As he put it in his diary, "I am impossible to comprehend from a worldly point of view."

Paul Klee asserted his artistic self-image in many different ways. In the 1922 "Ghost of a Genius," he seems to comment on the industrial and technological developments that didn't stop at the Bauhaus school of art. In this mechanical-like drawing, the artistic genius has turned it into a melancholic ghost, a lifeless puppet.

During his years at the Bauhaus, Klee met many other artists as well as craftsmen. Those interactions sparked ideas time and again, such as in his layered watercolors according to strict graphic specifications.

The above "Growth of the Night Plants" from 1922 uses the same technique of colors in shades and layers. While at work, Paul Klee liked to listen to music. The scale and repetition of geometric forms symbolizes chords and a musical composition's thematic motifs. He turned to nature to enhance the strict system with gracefully swaying motion.

Geometric patterns also form the "Flowering Tree," a visual statement aimed at Bauhaus colleagues who clung to right angles and primary colors. Klee's artwork is highly fragile (in the above case, oil on cardboard), so is rarely shipped anywhere on loan. The "Flowering Tree" is usually located at the National Museum of Art in Tokyo.

Klee's widow Livia gave the above drawing, "The Jumper," from 1930, to the Paul Klee Center in the Swiss capital, Bern. Inspired by the many workshops at Bauhaus, including glass painting, printing and weaving, the artist used a technique that involved spreading paint through a sieve.

In the early 20th century, people were excited about outer space, mirrored in Klee's paintings with a strong focus on floating geometric forms, free of gravity. Rational spaces tilt into irrational, multidimensional spaces, as in the above 1930 "Schwebendes." The painting fully corresponds to the idea of a "construction of mystery" that the artist himself raised in the Bauhaus magazine in 1928.

Paul Klee painted the above "Weathered Mosaic," on loan from the US, in 1933, after the Nazis fired him from his position at the Düsseldorf Art Academy. It symbolizes the process of social decay, and is one of only two Klee mosaic-style paintings. Both are reminiscent of early Christian mosaic art.

Back in Switzerland after the Nazis seized power in Germany, Paul Klee fell seriously ill, but created about 40 paintings during a more stable period in 1937, among them the famous "angel paintings." He painted the above "The Angel of Death" in 1940, the year he died. The exhibition "Paul Klee. Construction of Mystery" runs through June 10, 2018.