„Die Farbe hat mich. Ich brauche nicht nach ihr zu haschen. Sie hat mich für immer. Das ist der glücklichen Stunde Sinn: ich und die Farbe sind eins. Ich bin Maler.“
Tagebücher 1898-1918. Hrsg. von Felix Klee. Köln: DuMont Schauberg, 1957. S. 307
Zitate von Paul Klee
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Paul Klee
Geburtstag: 18. Dezember 1879
Todesdatum: 29. Juni 1940
Paul Ernst Klee war ein deutscher Maler und Grafiker, dessen vielseitiges Werk dem Expressionismus, Konstruktivismus, Kubismus, Primitivismus und dem Surrealismus zugeordnet wird. Klee stand in engem Kontakt zur Redaktionsgemeinschaft Der Blaue Reiter und zeigte auf ihrer zweiten Ausstellung 1912 grafische Arbeiten. Dem bis zu dieser Zeit hauptsächlich als Grafiker tätigen Künstler verhalf eine 1914 gemeinsam mit August Macke und Louis Moilliet durchgeführte Reise nach Tunesien zu seinem Durchbruch als Maler. Sie wurde als kunstgeschichtlich bedeutende Tunisreise bekannt.
Wie sein Freund, der russische Maler Wassily Kandinsky, lehrte Klee ab 1921 am Bauhaus in Weimar und später in Dessau. Ab 1931 war er Professor an der Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. Nach der Machtergreifung durch die Nationalsozialisten wurde er entlassen und ging zurück nach Bern, wo während der letzten Jahre ab dem Jahr 1934 trotz wachsender Belastung durch eine schwere Krankheit ein umfangreiches Spätwerk entstand. Neben seinem künstlerischen Werk verfasste er kunsttheoretische Schriften wie beispielsweise Schöpferische Konfession und Pädagogisches Skizzenbuch . Paul Klee gehört zu den bedeutendsten bildenden Künstlern der Klassischen Moderne des 20. Jahrhunderts. Wikipedia
Zitate Paul Klee
„Kunst gibt nicht das Sichtbare wieder, sondern macht sichtbar.“
Schöpferische Konfession. In: Tribüne der Kunst und der Zeit. Eine Schriftensammlung, Band XIII, hgg. v. Kasimir Edschmid. Reiß, Berlin 1920. S. 28
„Die Musik über alles lieben, heißt unglücklich sein.“
Tagebücher 1898-1918. Hrsg. von Felix Klee. Köln: DuMont Schauberg, 1957. S. 71
„The changeover was complete; in the summer of 1907 I devoted myself entirely to the appearance of nature and upon these studies built my black-and-white landscapes on glass, 1907/1908.“
Quote (1908), # 831, in The Diaries of Paul Klee; University of California Press, 1964; as quoted by Francesco Mazzaferro, in 'The Diaries of Paul Klee - Part Three' : Klee as a Secessionist and a Neo-Impressionist Artist http://letteraturaartistica.blogspot.nl/2015/05/paul-klee-ev.html
1903 - 1910
„The shaping of form is weak in energy in comparison with the determining of form. The final consequence of both ways of forming is form. From the ways to the end. From activity to the accomplished. From the genuinely living thing to the objective thing. In the beginning the male speciality, the energetic stimulus. Then the fleshly growth of the egg. Or: first the bright flash of lightning, then the raining cloud. When is the spirit at its purest? In the beginning. Here, work that becomes (dual). There, work that is.“
Diary entry (1913), # 944; as quoted by Francesco Mazzaferro, in 'The Diaries of Paul Klee - Part Four', : Klee as an Expressionist and Constructivist Painter http://letteraturaartistica.blogspot.nl/2015/05/paul-klee-ev27.html
1911 - 1914
„Art does not reproduce what we see. It makes us see.“
Section I
(de) Kunst gibt nicht das Sichtbare wieder, sondern macht sichtbar.
1916 - 1920, Creative Credo (1920)
Variante: Art does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible.
„Things appear to assume a broader and more diversified meaning, often seemingly contradicting the rational experience of yesterday. There is a striving to emphasize the essential character of the accidental.“
Section V
1916 - 1920, Creative Credo (1920)
Kontext: Formerly we used to represent things visible on earth, things we either liked to look at or would have liked to see. Today we reveal the reality that is behind visible things, thus expressing the belief that the visible world is merely an isolated case in relation to the universe and that there are many more other, latent realities. Things appear to assume a broader and more diversified meaning, often seemingly contradicting the rational experience of yesterday. There is a striving to emphasize the essential character of the accidental.
„My mirror probes down to the heart. I write words on the forehead and around the corners of the mouth. My human faces are truer than the real ones.“
Diary entry (Munich, 1901), # 136, in The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898-1918; University of California Press, 1968, p. 48
1895 - 1902
„The main thing now is not to paint precociously but to be, or at least become, an individual.“
Diary entry (3 June 1902), # 411, in The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898-1918; University of California Press, 1968
1895 - 1902
Kontext: The main thing now is not to paint precociously but to be, or at least become, an individual. The art of mastering life is the prerequisite for all further forms of expression, whether they are paintings, sculptures, tragedies, or musical compositions.
„Nature can afford to be prodigal in everything, the artist must be frugal down to the last detail.“
Diary entry (Munich, 1909), # 857, in The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898-1918; University of California Press, 1968, p. 236
1903 - 1910
Kontext: Nature can afford to be prodigal in everything, the artist must be frugal down to the last detail.
Nature is garrulous to the point of confusion, let the artist be truly taciturn.
„His [ Van Gogh's] pathos is alien to me, especially in my current phase, but he is certainly a genius. Pathetic to the point of being pathological, this endangered man can endanger one who does not see through him. Here a brain is consumed by the fire of a star. It frees itself in its work just before the catastrophe. Deepest tragedy takes place here, real tragedy, natural tragedy, exemplary tragedy. Permit me to be terrified.“
Quote (1908), # 816, in The Diaries of Paul Klee; University of California Press, 1964; as quoted by Francesco Mazzaferro, in 'The Diaries of Paul Klee - Part Three' : Klee as a Secessionist and a Neo-Impressionist Artist http://letteraturaartistica.blogspot.nl/2015/05/paul-klee-ev.html
1903 - 1910
„The eye travels along the paths cut out for it in the work.“
I.13 Productive | Receptive, p. 33
1921 - 1930, Pedagogical Sketch Book, (1925)
„Franz Marc.... is more human, he loves more warmly, is more demonstrative.... I only try to relate myself to God, and if I am in harmony with God, I don't fancy that my brothers are not also in harmony with me; but that is their business... My fire is more like that of the dead or the unborn... Art is like Creation: it holds good on the last days as on the first.
What my art probably lacks, is a kind of passionate humanity. I don't love animals and every sort of creature with an earthly warmth... I tend rather to dissolve into the whole of creation and am then on a footing of brotherliness to my neighbour, to all things earthly. I possess. The earth-idea gives way to the world-idea. My love is distant and religious.“
Quote (1916), # 1008, in The Diaries of Paul Klee, translation: Pierre B. Schneider, R. Y. Zachary and Max Knight; publisher, University of California Press, 1964
1916 - 1920
„The naked body is an altogether suitable object. In art classes I have gradually learned something of it from every angle. But now I will no more project some plan of it: I will proceed so that all its essentials, even those hidden by optical perspective, will appear upon the paper. And thus a little uncontested personal property has already been discovered, a style has been created.“
Quote (June 1902), as cited in Artists on Art, from the 14th – 20th centuries, ed. Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves; Pantheon Books, 1972, London, p. 443
1895 - 1902
„In art, too, there is room enough for exact research... What was accomplished in music before the end of the eighteenth century has hardly been begun in the pictorial field.“
quote of Paul Klee from the text Exact experiments in the realm of art, 1928; as quoted in 'Klee & Kandinsky', 2015 exhibition text, Lenbachhaus und Kunstbau Munich, 2015-2016 https://www.zpk.org/en/exhibitions/review_0/2015/klee-kandinsky-969.html
1921 - 1930
„For the artist communication with nature remains the most essential condition. The artist is human; himself nature; part of nature within natural space.“
Klee's statement written in 1923, in 'Paths of the Study of Natura' (Wage dar Natur studiums), Paul Klee; in Yearbook of the Staatlich. Bauhaus, Weimar, 1919-1923, Bauhaus Verlag, Weimar, 1923
1921 - 1930
„Our initial perplexity before nature is explained by our seeing at first the small outer branches and not penetrating to the main branches or the trunk. But once this is realized, one will perceive a repetition of the whole law even in the outermost leaf and turn it to good use.“
Quote (1904), # 536, in The Diaries of Paul Klee, translation: Pierre B. Schneider, R. Y. Zachary and Max Knight; publisher, University of California Press, 1964
1903 - 1910
