Paul Klee [antikvár]

p AUL KLEE WAS ONE of the pioneers of a new art who belong to the generation born around 1880; since his death in 1940 his fame has been steadily growing. Because he developed slowly, and, as he put it, "began with the smallest things," building stone by stone, his truly creative period covers no more than twenty years, from his appointment to the Bauhaus in Weimar to his death in Bern. During those two decades he produced the works which embody the unique quality of his genius. Despite their relatively small size his pictures have their place in every art collection beside the larger paintings of Picasso, Braque, and Miró, for they are quite different, as though created on another planet. They are perfect in themselves, flawless applications of artistic techniques Klee himself invented, and beyond that, they penetrate into provinces that had hitherto been closed to painting-music, poetry, and even philosophy. Why should not the painter be also a poet and a philosopher?, Klee asked. In order to be able to paint as he had dreamed of painting, and achieve a complexity of statement equal to that of the poet, the composer, or the philosopher, he had to go a long way.