The Nazis ransacked his workshop in order to display the booty at the Degenerate Art exhibition. They hated his pacifism and eccentricity.
He did not consider abstractionism to be an ideal form of conveying information about beauty. The sad sage noted that people begin to avoid specifics in creativity when they are afraid to look around them, and even more so to retell what they see to the viewer.
Childhood
Music teacher Hans Wilhelm Klee from the suburb of Bern, Switzerland, felt himself the happiest person in the world when, in 1879, his beautiful wife gave birth to a boy. The firstborn was a girl, the second - the son Paul, how this family resembles the one where the genius Mozart grew up! The newborn's mother, Ida-Maria, did not deny this similarity. She was an opera singer and sentimental in nature.
The boy was assured from infancy that he would make a career as a musician. Success in playing the violin confirmed the opinion of the parents. The eleven-year-old child prodigy performed in Bern at a concert by the City Music Association. The fact that the boy painted all the school notebooks with funny figures did not interest any of the adults - his future was predetermined. The only person who saw an artist in the baby was his grandmother.
Youth
Paul almost failed the final exam at the gymnasium - the teachers were enraged by the cartoons in the fields of work, but who will spoil the life of a genius. Homes were shocked by the adolescent's statement that being a composer is now not relevant, and the documents for admission have already been sent to the Heinrich Knirr School of Painting in Munich. The adored child got away with it - he was forgiven and blessed on the way.
While receiving an education in the field of painting, Klee was interested in the master's worldview. In 1897, he began to keep a diary, where he recorded all his impressions and opinions about improvement in various styles of drawing. His technique was considered imperfect, but an interesting approach to teaching opened the doors of the Munich Academy of Arts for the innovator. There he became famous as an original and a womanizer. The young man decided to bring order to his personal life only after marriage.
In search of
Already in his senior years, our hero fell in love with traveling around Europe. He visited museums, where works of authors who made a contribution to the development of painting were exhibited, and also got acquainted with his colleagues. The student visited Italy and France, learned more about contemporary art. After completing his bachelor's degree and returning to Bern, he set about inventing his own drawing technique. In 1910, the first personal exhibition of the young artist took place in his hometown. He soon moved to Germany.
In 1911, mutual friends introduced Paul Klee to Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Mark and August Macke. Our hero joined the "Blue Rider" group. The works in the style of primitivism were very different from the paintings of his comrades, and the common cause stalled. But our hero managed to persuade new friends to make a voyage to Tunisia. This happened at the beginning of 1914.
Rethinking
The beginning of the First World War was received with enthusiasm by the artists. Under the influence of militaristic propaganda, they volunteered for the front. Klee did not escape this fate. Waiting for a response from the military registration and enlistment office, he painted patriotic watercolors. In 1916, he was first drafted into a reserve unit, and then sent to an aviation school.
The painter was preparing to join the battle when he learned of the death of Franz Mark. The artist's widow gave him letters to friends that her husband sent her shortly before the tragic end. Paul was deeply impressed by what he read in them. He cursed the war and changed the titles of his previously written works so that they called not to kill, but to stop the massacre.
Troubled times
The audience greeted the famous painter, who was able to declare his pacifist views and repent for incitement to violence. When the people rebelled against the imperial regime, Paul Klee supported the left. In 1919 he was invited to the Executive Committee of Revolutionary Artists. Berlin, where the fighting was taking place, was not easy to get to. The failed commissar was caught on the way by the news of the defeat of the Republicans.
In 1921 Klee obtained a teaching position at the Bauhaus art school in Dessau. He sought out his pre-war friends, found many like-minded people. Unfriendly forces also nourished interest in the artist - the Nazis did not like the artist's convictions and the presence of Jews among his relatives. It was possible to ignore the embittered herd until 1933, when Adolf Hitler seized power in Germany.
last years of life
From now on, it was unsafe for Paul Klee to be in Germany. Hoping to influence public opinion by teaching, the painter tried to get documents that would confirm his Aryan origin. While our hero wandered through the offices, searches were carried out in his apartment and workshop. His canvases were captured by the enemy as trophies.
Klee was forced to flee to Switzerland. He asked to be granted the citizenship of this country, but local officials, knowing the biography of this troublemaker, hesitated to make a decision. Exhausted by the persecution in Germany, which was still his native country, and by an unfriendly reception in his homeland, Paul fell seriously ill. The artist was dying, knowing that his works were presented both in the Zurich gallery and at the Nazi propaganda exhibition "Degenerate Art". In 1940 Paul Klee died.
