Mostly Gardens by Paul Klee (1879-1940) In His Own Words

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I am drawn to much of Paul Klee's work (& there is much to be drawn to!), especially to his garden depictions. Paul Klee (1879-1940) was a Swiss-German artist known for the fine lines & playful geometry in his childlike watercolors & illustrations. Klee was raised in Switzerland but spent most of his adult life in Germany, where he studied art at the end of the 19th century. A skilled illustrator & respected teacher at the Bauhaus, Klee was influenced by Cubism & drawn to the expressiveness of primitive art & children's paintings. Klee produced nearly 10,000 works in a variety of media, but he is mostly known for his watercolor paintings. At the peak of his career his work was deemed "degenerate" by the Nazi party of Adolf Hitler & removed from all public German exhibits.

1914 Paul Klee (1879-1940). Southern Garden.

Color is the place where our brain and the universe meet.

1914 Paul Klee (1879-1940). Red and White Domes

The creation of a work of art must...be accompanied by distortion of the natural form. For, therein is nature reborn.

Paul Klee (1879-1940). Hermitage. 1918

Every artist would like to live in the central organ of creation... Not all are destined to get there... but our beating hearts drive us deep down, right into the pit of creation.

1919 Paul Klee (1879-1940). Southern (Tunisian) Gardens

The way to form transcends its own destination, goes beyond the end of the way itself.

1920 Paul Klee (1879-1940). Rose Garden

To achieve vital harmony in a picture it must be constructed out of parts in themselves incomplete, brought into harmony only at the last stroke.

1920 Paul Klee (1879-1940). Abstract Imagery A Garden .

Light and the rational forms are locked in combat; light sets them into motion, bends what is straight, makes parallels oval, inscribes circles in the intervals, makes the intervals active.

1920 Paul Klee (1879-1940). Temple Garden.

In earlier days, even as a child, the beauty of landscapes was quite clear to me. A background for the soul's moods. Now dangerous moments occur when Nature tries to devour me; at such times I am annihilated, but at peace.

1924 Paul Klee (1879-1940). Bird Garden.

In earlier times artists liked to show what was actually visible... nowadays we are concerned with reality, rather than the merely visible.

1924 Paul Klee (1879-1940). Memory of a Garden.

I want to be as though new-born, knowing nothing, absolutely nothing... Then I want to do something modest; to work out by myself a tiny, formal motive, one that my pencil will be able to hold without technique.

1922 Paul Klee (1879-1940). Senecio.

By using patches of color and tone it is possible to capture every natural impression in the simplest way, freshly and immediately.

1925 Paul Klee (1879-1940). Ancient Sound, Abstract on Black

My hand is entirely the implement of a distant sphere. It is not my head that functions but something else, something higher, something somewhere remote. I must have great friends there, dark as well as bright... They are all very kind to me.

1925 Paul Klee (1879-1940).Crucifers and Spiral Flowers.

Art does not reproduce what we see; rather, it makes us see.

1927 Paul Klee (1879-1940). Flowers on the Sand.

Color possesses me. I don't have to pursue it. It will possess me always, I know it...Color and I are one.

1928 Paul Klee (1879-1940). Castle and Sun

Everything vanishes around me, and works are born as if out of the void. Ripe, graphic fruits fall off. My hand has become the obedient instrument of a remote will.

1930 Paul Klee (1879-1940). Conqueror.

The more horrifying the world becomes, the more art becomes abstract.

1935 Paul Klee (1879-1940). Drawn One.

One eye sees, the other feels.

1936 Paul Klee (1879-1940). Southern Gardens
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