Paul Klee ( December 18 1879 – June 29 1940)
was a Swiss-born artist. His highly individual style was influenced by
movements in art that included Expressionism, Cubism, and Surrealism. Klee was
a natural draftsman who experimented with and eventually deeply explored color
theory, writing about it extensively; his lectures Writings on Form and Design
Theory (Schriften zur Form und Gestaltungslehre), published in English as the
Paul Klee Notebooks, are held to be as important for modern art as Leonardo da
Vinci's A Treatise on Painting for the Renaissance. He and his colleague,
Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky, both taught at the Bauhaus school of art,
design and architecture. His works reflect his dry humor and his sometimes
childlike perspective, his personal moods and beliefs, and his musicality.