Museum Exhibition Catalogues, Monographs, Artist's Projects, Curatorial Writings and Essays
"For Klee, devoting himself to children's drawings was a way of liberating his own creativity from its cultural conditioning. Inextricably bound up with this is the utopian notion of a synthesis between the mature artist's discriminating approach to picture-making and the child's elementary will to express itself, the 'ideal harmonious totality' of the artist 'who, as it were, never grows out of the simplicity of childhood.'" Michael Baumgartner, excerpted from Paul Klee--The Discovery of Childhood in Klee and CoBrA: Child's Play.
Text by Michael Baumgartner, Christine Hopfengart, Fabienne Eggelhöfer, Osama Okuda.
Back in print, the most authoritative overview on the beloved Bauhaus Renaissance man and pioneer of abstraction, the first artist to "take a line for a walk"
Hbk, 10.5 x 11.75 in. / 344 pgs / 488 color. | 6/30/2020 | In stock $55.00
Edited by Josef Helfenstein and Elizabeth Hutton Turner. Essays by Jenny Anger, Vivian Endicott Barnett, Michael Baumgartner, Charles W. Hazxthausen and Osamu Okuda.
Hardcover, 9.75 x 11.5 in. / 320 pgs / 100 color / 50 bw. | 3/1/2006 | Not available $55.00
Essays by Ursina Barandun, Klaus Baumgartner, Michael Baumgartner, Stefan Frey, Christine Hopfengart, Benedikt Loderer, Andreas Marti, Lorenz Meyer, Tilman Osterwold, Rolf Soiron, Adrian Weber, and Kasper Zehnder, et. al.
Hardcover, 8.75 x 10.25 in. / 400 pgs / 185 color / 120 bw. | 8/15/2005 | Not available $60.00
Published by Hatje Cantz. Text by Michael Baumgartner, Christine Hopfengart, Fabienne Eggelhöfer, Osama Okuda.
The many books on Paul Klee (1879-1940) published over the years should not obscure the fact that there has been no new, comprehensive Klee overview since Will Grohmann’s oft-reprinted 1954 monograph. With Paul Klee: Life and Work, the Zentrum Paul Klee has set out to fill this gap, drawing on a wealth of new resources including the Klee family’s archives, much of which is published here for the first time.
Life and work are truly integrated in this massive, 344-page volume: Klee’s vast body of work is surveyed chronologically, as the book narrates his life alongside the abundant reproductions of drawings, paintings, watercolors, sculptures, puppets and numerous archival documents and photographs (nearly 500 reproductions in total).
The book divides Klee’s career into eight periods: “Childhood and Youth”; “Munich and the Encounter with the Avant Garde”; “World War I and the Breakthrough to Success”; “At the Bauhaus in Weimar”; “Master of Modern Art”; “The Move to Dusseldorf and the Nazi Rise to Power”; “First Years of Emigration in Bern”; and “Final Years.”
The result of many years of research and labor, this magisterial publication demonstrates conclusively why Klee numbers among the most influential and best-loved artists of the past 100 years.
Published by Lars Müller Publishers. Edited by Lars Müller. Introduction by Astrid Bähr.
Active at the Bauhaus between 1920 and 1931, teaching in the bookbinding, stained glass and mural-painting workshops, Paul Klee (1879–1940) brought his expressive blend of color and line to the school—and, with the second volume in the Bauhausbücher series, beyond its walls.
In his legendary Pedagogical Sketchbook, Klee presents his theoretical approach to drawing using geometric shapes and lines. Evincing a desire to reunite artistic design and craft, and written in a tone that oscillates between the seeming objectivity of the diagram, the rhetoric of science and mathematics, and an abstract, quasi-mystical intuition, Klee’s text expresses key aspects of the Bauhaus’ pedagogy and guiding philosophies. And while Klee’s method is deeply personal, in the context of the fundamentally multivocal Bauhaus, his individual approach to abstract form is typical in its idiosyncrasy. In the Pedagogical Sketchbook, Klee presents his own theories about the relationships between line, form, surface, color, space and time in art in the context of the Bauhaus. The book testifies to Klee’s intensive theoretical explorations of art and exemplifies how the Bauhaus masters interconnected the various realms of art and design.
In the present volume, the 1953 English translation of Pedagogical Sketchbook by Sibyl Moholy-Nagy is combined with the design and physical qualities of the original German edition from 1925.
Published by Hatje Cantz. Edited with text by Anna Szech. Text by Fabienne Eggelhöfer.
One of Time Magazine's best photo book of 2019
Among the nearly 10,000 works Klee created in the course of his career are some of the most pioneering and influential examples of modernist abstraction—works that continue to resonate today.
Starting in 1913, this book presents around 100 works from all periods of Klee’s career, reproducing paintings and drawings from numerous renowned institutions and private collections in Europe and overseas. The works are grouped under four themes—nature, architecture, painting and graphic characters—that show how Klee constantly oscillated between the semi-representational and the absolute abstract.
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.
Published by Hatje Cantz. Text by Michael Baumgartner, Christine Hopfengart.
The many books on Paul Klee (1879–1940) published over the years should not obscure the fact that there has been no new, comprehensive Klee overview since Will Grohmann’s much reprinted 1954 monograph. With Paul Klee: Life and Work, the Zentrum Paul Klee has set out to fill this gap, drawing on a wealth of new resources including the Klee family’s archives, much of which is published here for the first time. Life and work are truly integrated in this massive, 344-page volume: Klee’s vast body of work is surveyed chronologically, as the book narrates his life alongside the abundant reproductions of drawings, paintings, watercolors, sculptures, puppets and numerous archival documents and photographs (500 reproductions in total, half of which are color). The book divides Klee’s career into eight periods: “Childhood and Youth”; “Munich and the Encounter with the Avant Garde”; “World War I and the Breakthrough to Success”; “At the Bauhaus in Weimar”; “Master of Modern Art”; “The Move to Dusseldorf and the Nazi Rise to Power”; “First Years of Emigration in Bern”; and “Final Years.” The result of many years of research and labor, this magisterial publication demonstrates conclusively why Klee numbers among the most influential and best loved artists of the past 100 years.
Published by Hatje Cantz. Text by Michael Baumgartner, Walter Benjamin, Christine Hopfengart, Reto Sorg, Konrad Tobler, Gregor Wedekind.
Paul Klee (1879–1940) began to experience the first symptoms of scleroderma--a systemic autoimmune disease--in 1933, although it was only diagnosed posthumously. His interest in angels arose while he was ill, and they became a dominant theme, particularly from 1938 on. Klee’s depictions of angels are among his most popular paintings. Perhaps one reason for their enduring popularity is that angels are trapped in human form; like us, they have flaws and weaknesses, can be playful, worried or even malicious. While these works reflect the fear of death as well as the fragility of the incurably ill, they are also imbued with the artist’s quiet sagacity and whimsical humor. With 138 reproductions in color and writings on Klee by Walter Benjamin among others, Paul Klee: The Angels sheds new light on individual works in the series, such as the iconic “Angelus Novus,” which Benjamin purchased in 1921--for the equivalent of about $30--and which led him to formulate his notion of the “angel of history.”
Published by La Fábrica/Fundación Juan March. Text by Fabienne Eggelhöfer, Marianne Keller Tschirren, Wolfgang Thöner.
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.
Published by The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Text by Christophe Cherix, James Thrall Soby.
Paul Klee (1879-1940) was an extraordinary draftsman, printmaker, teacher and theoretician with a singular style whose work greatly impacted the development of twentieth-century art. Klee's prints demonstrate, more fully than his works in any other medium, his remarkable evolution from a traditionalist to one of the most daring innovators of modern art. This limited-edition facsimile of The Prints of Paul Klee, originally published by The Museum of Modern Art, New York in 1947, presents 40 of Klee's etchings and lithographs from MoMA's collection, ranging in date from 1903 to 1931 and each printed on a separate sheet of stiff card, eight of which are in color. Accompanied by a 40-page booklet featuring an essay by James Thrall Soby (then Chairman of the museum's Department of Painting and Sculpture), and a new text by Christophe Cherix, MoMA's Chief Curator of Prints and Illustrated Books, the prints are encased in a cloth-covered and ribbon-bound box. This unique and luxurious portfolio is being reissued for the first time since its original publication, and is available in a limited edition of 2,000 numbered copies.
Published by Hatje Cantz. Text by Michael Baumgartner, Jonathan Fineberg, Rudi Fuchs.
Friedrich Froebel's invention of the kindergarten in the nineteenth century and Rudolf Steiner's educational theory at the start of the twentieth century had enormous consequences for modern art--above all in their theorizings of childhood creativity. Paul Klee in particular was greatly influenced by their work and the particular qualities of children's art, as his finger paintings and puppets, as well as his writings, attest. Following Klee's lead, and in the wake of the Second World War, the loose collective of artists known as CoBrA (from the initials of the members' home cities of Copenhagen, Brussels and Amsterdam) embraced childhood creativity as a redemptive freedom against the comparative formal strictures of earlier avant gardes. This volume examines the dialogue that Karel Appel, Constant, Corneille, Christian Dotremont, Asger Jorn and Joseph Noiret forged with the art of Paul Klee, underlining Klee's more playful and mischievous qualities.
Published by Hatje Cantz. Edited by Dieter Scholz, Christina Thomson. Text by Christine Hopfengart, Olivier Berggruen, Peter-Klaus Schuster.
There are artists whose métier is the observation or documentation of the world, and artists who set the world aside altogether to build their own visionary cosmology, designing its constituent parts from scratch as a personal mythology relayed in motifs. Paul Klee (1879-1940) was such an artist, as his aphorism “Art does not reproduce the visible, rather it makes visible” testifies, and The Klee Universe addresses his work from this perspective. In 1906, Klee noted in his diary, "All will be Klee," and in 1911, as the encyclopedist of his cosmos, he began to meticulously chronicle his works in a catalogue that, by the time he died, was to contain more than 9,000 items. Here, in the fashion of an Orbis Pictus or a Renaissance emblem book, Klee's oeuvre is made legible as a cogent entirety, in thematic units address: the human life cycle, from birth and childhood to sexual desire, parenthood and death; music, architecture, theater and religion; plants, animals and landscapes; and, finally, darker, destructive forces in the shape of war, fear and death. The Klee Universe reimagines the artist as a Renaissance man, an artist of great learning whose cosmos proves to be a coherent system of ideas and images. Paul Klee (1879-1940) was born and died in Switzerland, though he never obtained Swiss citizenship. Technically of German nationality, he taught at the Bauhaus from 1921 to 1926, alongside Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc and others. Seventeen of his works were included in the Nazi's infamous 1937 Munich exhibition of "degenerate art."
Published by Hatje Cantz. Text by Michael Baumgartner, Arnfinn Bø-Rygg, Richard Hoppe-Sailer, Ole-Henrik Moe, Osamu Okuda.
Many call Paul Klee a magician. He was no such thing; he did not conjure up anything. He was a creator who found beauty in the world around him, wrote one of Klee's students from the legendary Bauhaus. The Swiss-born painter, like many of his contemporaries--Kandinsky among them--was interested in Transcendentalism and found nature an inexhaustible source of inspiration. Much of his oeuvre depicts gardens and parks--from real locations such as the Garden Kingdom of Dessau-Wörlitz in Germany or the Tunisian Hammamet to fantastic, fragmentary vegetal abstractions. An amateur naturalist, Klee would often collect flowers and leaves on walks, to later identify and store in an herbarium. With more than 200 color illustrations, this publication explores the spiritual, scientific and aesthetic manifestations of Klee's engagement with nature, revealing a complex approach, by turns coolly analytical and completely subjective. Born in 1879, Paul Klee belonged to the Munich-based proto-Expressionist group Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider), which was active from 1911-1914. Members sought to express spiritual truths in their work, which--radically for the time--moved progressively towards complete abstraction.
Published by Hatje Cantz. Foreword by Juri Steiner. Text by Christine Hopfengart, Fabienne Eggelhöffer, Armin Kerber, Beate Schlichenmaier, et al.
Like many of his Bauhaus contemporaries, Paul Klee (1879-1940) was deeply influenced by theater and the stage. Throughout his life Klee attended theatrical performances, from the opera to puppet shows, with an almost fanatical zeal, and characters from plays or opera--Hamlet, Falstaff and Don Giovanni, for example--populate his enigmatic visual world. Various types of character roles and theatrical elements, like clowns and masks, were firmly established themes in his repertoire, and as last year's delightful Paul Klee: Hand Puppets showed, he also delighted in puppetry, making bizarre bricolaged puppets out of household materials to amuse his son Felix. Primarily, though, Klee understood the sympathies between theater and life, absorbing the topos of the world as a stage into his observations: People became actors or marionettes and theatrical events touched upon scenes from everyday life. This publication sheds light on all of these aspects of Klee's fascination with the arts of the stage. A chronology gives a panoramic outline of his several encounters with the theater and a selection of works by contemporary artists makes it clear that Klee was not the only artist to be fascinated with the sharp-eyed perception of theatrical scenarios--the topic is one that continues to engage artists today.
Published by Hatje Cantz. Essays by Christine Hopfengart, Alexander Klee, Felix Klee, Osamu Okuda, Tilman Osterwold and Eva Widerkehr.
Between 1916 and 1925 Paul Klee (1879-1940) made some 50 hand puppets for his son, Felix, of which 30 are still in existence. For the heads, he used materials from his own household: beef bones and electrical outlets, bristle brushes, leftover bits of fur and nutshells. Soon he began to sew costumes. These characters and small works, do not pretend to be great art, but at the same time, they are superbly imaginative, sweetly reminiscent of Klee's relationships with his family, and beautifully illustrative of the artistic and social developments of the time. Readers will see the chronological proximity of Dada and Kurt Schwitters's collages in Klee's Matchbox Ghost; the German National caricatures one of the era's more ominous political types. An introductory essay tracks the work's links to other avant-garde puppetry and to Klee's sculptural works, and notes his connections to the theater. For their part, Klee's son Felix and his grandson Alexander tell the story of how the figures were created.
Published by Hatje Cantz. Edited by Josef Helfenstein and Elizabeth Hutton Turner. Essays by Jenny Anger, Vivian Endicott Barnett, Michael Baumgartner, Charles W. Hazxthausen and Osamu Okuda.
Paul Klee was a leading figure in European Modernism, and his acclaim at home was quickly matched in the United States, where both private collectors and major museums sought out his work. Klee and America explores the reasons for that enthusiastic reception, especially during the 1930s and 1940s, while the artist was being targeted in Hitler's campaign against Entartete Kunst (degenerate art). Just as the European market for Klee's work was collapsing, American patrons and curators were gobbling it up. And after he had been removed from his teaching post in Dsseldorf and had returned to his childhood home in Switzerland, Klee continued to be represented by a number of German-Jewish art dealers who had emigrated to the U.S. Eventually his work landed in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim, among others. Foremost among Klee's earliest American collectors was Katherine Dreier, whose Societe Anonyme, founded with artists Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray, sponsored the exhibitions of pioneering abstract art in which his paintings were first shown in America. In Los Angeles, Walter and Louise Arensberg assembled a vast collection of Klee's paintings. In 1939, Alfred Barr Jr. bought a first canvas for MoMA. Klee and America examines this history and offers an impressive selection of Klee's finest "American" works, both paintings and drawings.
Published by Hatje Cantz. Essays by Ursina Barandun, Klaus Baumgartner, Michael Baumgartner, Stefan Frey, Christine Hopfengart, Benedikt Loderer, Andreas Marti, Lorenz Meyer, Tilman Osterwold, Rolf Soiron, Adrian Weber, and Kasper Zehnder, et. al.
The Zentrum Paul Klee, which opened its doors during the summer of 2005, is not an art museum in the traditional sense--just as its raison d'être, Paul Klee, was by no means a traditional artist. Klee, who was also a musician, teacher and poet, ranks comfortably as one of the twentieth century's most significant and beloved artists. His artworks, which partook marvelously in the spirit of the naïf and the childlike, were the visual wonder of an intellect that also produced fascinating theoretical and educational treatises. The center, housed in a marvelously undulating building designed by renowned architect Renzo Piano, is set to become the leading resource worldwide for mediations on the life and work of Paul Klee, as well as the reception of his art. The diversity of Klee's artistic activities will be thoroughly represented here, with nearly 40 percent of the artist's entire oeuvre accounted for, totalling some 4,000 paintings, watercolors and drawings, as well as plentiful archives and biographical material. The collection has been compiled from a number of contributing sources, including generous donations and loans from the founding Klee and Mller families, the former Paul Klee foundation and numerous private holdings.
Published by Hatje Cantz. Edited by Jurgen Glaesemer. Essays by Carolyn Lanchner, Ann Temkin.
Fitting Paul Klee's extraordinary oeuvre into book form is certainly a complex endeavor--Klee's diverse body of work is always opening itself up to new interpretations, and has escaped classification under the aegis of any particular style, group, or movement. This monograph achieves this feat by offering Klee in all his uniqueness, never attempting to subject the artist and his work to one interpretation. Here we see Klee's organically developed and open-ended art, which sought inspiration everywhere and in turn inspired so many in all areas of the arts. Fairytale lyricism and grotesque satire, tender jesting and very real horror, profound mysticism and sober romanticism all coexist in Klee's images. These works radiate a variety and creative energy that is rarely seen in such profusion. Paul Klee: Life and Work presents a comprehensive selection of paintings and other images, documented in nearly 500 color and black-and-white images, alongside essays that explore the artist's life and offer surprising insights into his work.
Paul Klee: Pedagogical Sketchbook
Paul Klee: The Abstract Dimension
Paul Klee: Life and Work
Paul Klee: The Angels
Paul Klee: Bauhaus Master
The Prints of Paul Klee
Klee and CoBrA: Child's Play
The Klee Universe
In Paul Klee's Enchanted Garden
Paul Klee: Theater Everywhere
Paul Klee: Hand Puppets
Klee and America
Paul Klee: Zentrum Paul Klee
Paul Klee: His Life And Work