'Die Söhne des Junggesellen'. Richard Oelze. Einzelgänger des Surrealismus.

Hopfengart, Christine

Hatje Cantz Verlag

Paul Klee

Tilman Osterwold, Aljoscha Klee & Felix Klee

Hatje Cantz

Between 1916 and 1925 Paul Klee (1879-1940) made some 50 hand puppets for his son, Felix, of which 30 are still in existence. For the heads, he used materials from his own household: beef bones and electrical outlets, bristle brushes, leftover bits of fur and nutshells. Soon he began to sew costumes. These characters and small works, do not pretend to be great art, but at the same time, they are superbly imaginative, sweetly reminiscent of Klee's relationships with his family, and beautifully illustrative of the artistic and social developments of the time. Readers will see the chronological proximity of Dada and Kurt Schwitters's collages in Klee's Matchbox Ghost; the German National caricatures one of the era's more ominous political types. An introductory essay tracks the work's links to other avant-garde puppetry and to Klee's sculptural works, and notes his connections to the theater. For their part, Klee's son Felix and his grandson Alexander tell the story of how the figures were created.

Paul Klee: Hand Puppets

Okuda, Osamu

Reference

Like many of his Bauhaus contemporaries, Paul Klee (1879-1940) was deeply influenced by theater and the stage. Throughout his life Klee attended theatrical performances, from the opera to puppet shows, with an almost fanatical zeal, and characters from plays or opera--Hamlet, Falstaff and Don Giovanni, for example--populate his enigmatic visual world. Various types of character roles and theatrical elements, like clowns and masks, were firmly established themes in his repertoire, and as last year's delightful Paul Klee: Hand Puppets showed, he also delighted in puppetry, making bizarre bricolaged puppets out of household materials to amuse his son Felix. Primarily, though, Klee understood the sympathies between theater and life, absorbing the topos of the world as a stage into his observations: People became actors or marionettes and theatrical events touched upon scenes from everyday life. This publication sheds light on all of these aspects of Klee's fascination with the arts of the stage. A chronology gives a panoramic outline of his several encounters with the theater and a selection of works by contemporary artists makes it clear that Klee was not the only artist to be fascinated with the sharp-eyed perception of theatrical scenarios--the topic is one that continues to engage artists today.

Paul Klee: Theater Everywhere

Arts & Photography

Eggelhöffer, Fabienne

Individual Artists

There are artists whose métier is the observation or documentation of the world, and artists who set the world aside altogether to build their own visionary cosmology, designing its constituent parts from scratch as a personal mythology relayed in motifs. Paul Klee (1879-1940) was such an artist, as his aphorism "Art does not reproduce the visible, rather it makes visible" testifies, and The Klee Universe addresses his work from this perspective. In 1906, Klee noted in his diary, "All will be Klee," and in 1911, as the encyclopedist of his cosmos, he began to meticulously chronicle his works in a catalogue that, by the time he died, was to contain more than 9,000 items. Here, in the fashion of an Orbis Pictus or a Renaissance emblem book, Klee's oeuvre is made legible as a cogent entirety, in thematic units address: the human life cycle, from birth and childhood to sexual desire, parenthood and death; music, architecture, theater and religion; plants, animals and landscapes; and, finally, darker, destructive forces in the shape of war, fear and death. The Klee Universe reimagines the artist as a Renaissance man, an artist of great learning whose cosmos proves to be a coherent system of ideas and images. Paul Klee (1879-1940) was born and died in Switzerland, though he never obtained Swiss citizenship. Technically of German nationality, he taught at the Bauhaus from 1921 to 1926, alongside Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc and others. Seventeen of his works were included in the Nazi's infamous 1937 Munich exhibition of "degenerate art."

The Klee Universe

The many books on Paul Klee (1879–1940) published over the years should not obscure the fact that there has been no new, comprehensive Klee overview since Will Grohmann’s much reprinted 1954 monograph. With Paul Klee: Life and Work, the Zentrum Paul Klee has set out to fill this gap, drawing on a wealth of new resources including the Klee family’s archives, much of which is published here for the first time. Life and work are truly integrated in this massive, 344-page volume: Klee’s vast body of work is surveyed chronologically, as the book narrates his life alongside the abundant reproductions of drawings, paintings, watercolors, sculptures, puppets and numerous archival documents and photographs (500 reproductions in total, half of which are color). The book divides Klee’s career into eight periods: “Childhood and Youth”; “Munich and the Encounter with the Avant Garde”; “World War I and the Breakthrough to Success”; “At the Bauhaus in Weimar”; “Master of Modern Art”; “The Move to Dusseldorf and the Nazi Rise to Power”; “First Years of Emigration in Bern”; and “Final Years.” The result of many years of research and labor, this magisterial publication demonstrates conclusively why Klee numbers among the most influential and best loved artists of the past 100 years.

Paul Klee: Life and Work

Baumgartner, Michael

Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky, two of the most influential figures in the modernist movement, are the subject of this illuminating book that opens a dialogue between their work, friendship, and influence on each other. Klee and Kandinsky were towering figures of the modernist movement and were close, both as friends and artists. For a time they lived next door to one another, and exchanged their artistic ideas on a daily basis. This unique book explores their 30-year relationship, from the time of the Blue Rider group around 1912, to the Bauhaus years in Weimar and Dessau until the late 1930s. With the culture of the Weimar Republic as a backdrop, this book traces the eventful history of an artistic friendship. Kandinsky’s idealism is juxtaposed with Klee’s irony, and we learn that their relationship was characterized in equal measure by friendship and competitiveness, mutual influence and the need to establish distance. The focus is on the artistic dialogue they enacted through their art. They were joined by an aspiration to spiritualize art and explore its intrinsic laws. At the same time, Kandinsky’s commitment to abstraction contrasted strongly with Klee’s allegiance to natural models.

Klee and Kandinsky: Neighbors, Friends, Rivals

Hoberg, Annegret

Endicott Barnett, Vivian

Prestel

Klee, vom Sonderfall zum Publikumsliebling: Stationen seiner öffentlichen Resonanz in Deutschland 1905-1960 (German Edition)

Foreign Language Study & Reference

P. von Zabern

1914 Die Avantgarden im Kampf: Kat. Bundeskunsthalle Bonn (German Edition)

Winter, Jay

Schneede, Uwe M.

Fleckner, Uwe

Gillen, Eckhart

Kitschen, Friederike

Segal, Joes

Bonnefoit, Régine

Held, Gertrud

Hölscher, Lucian

Bolle, Natascha

History & Criticism

Snoeck Publishing Company

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