Comprehensive in scope and elegant in design, Paul Klee: Bauhaus
Master is a landmark publication resulting from several years of work
in collaboration with the Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern, and based on a
recent critical publication on Klee's "pedagogical legacy." The book
contextualizes a selection of 137 works--including paintings,
watercolors and drawings, made between 1899 and 1940--with nearly 100
handwritten notes selected from classes Klee gave at the Bauhaus,
alongside an extensive array of archival objects and documents ranging
from archival photographs to the artist's herbaria through to his
reading, sketchbooks and publications. Demonstrating the unity of Klee's
art and pedagogy--the unity of his hand and mind--Bauhaus Master
presents an artist thinking with and through his materials and
image-making practices, endlessly testing both.
Paul Klee (1879-1940) was born in Switzerland and studied at
Munich's Academy of Fine Arts. Klee participated in several exhibitions
between 1911 and 1913, but the breakthrough in his career was a 1914
trip to Tunis with August Macke and Louis Moillet, after which he
painted his first abstract work. From 1919 he was represented by
influential dealer Hans Goltz. Klee taught at the Bauhaus from 1921 to
1931; when the ascent of Nazism forced the closure of the Bauhaus, Klee
emigrated to Switzerland. Although still working, he was in ill health
until his death in 1940.
