Zentrum Paul Klee Publishes the Artist's Notebooks

You can now discover 3900 pages of the personal notebooks of the artist Paul Klee.

The twentieth and twenty-first centuries saw the birth and brilliance of Paul Klee's work of bright colors and geometric shapes. It is impossible to assign this painter to any artistic current or to any particular school, Paul Klee was, without a doubt, a free soul. He began by approaching German expressionism and, later, he painted abstract and surrealist paintings.

The Zentrum Paul Klee has made public 3900 pages of the artist's notebooks. His handwriting forms his reflections and illustrations on the mechanics of art and color. Although they are written in German, his images will captivate all viewers with their vividness, honesty and clarity.

Paul Klee explored his own technique to express what he felt, what he saw and his own personality. His sensitivity goes back to his childhood: his parents were musicians and he started violin lessons at the age of 7. As the great artist he had inscribed in his genetics, he ended up becoming a great violinist before becoming a painter. Although music was fundamental in his life, he opted for painting. It is said that it was out of pure rebellion and because he was beginning to become disenchanted with modern music. His more than 9000 works allude to poetry, to music, obviously, and also to dreams. The details of his works invite you to get a little closer and discover his world.

Paul Klee becomes a master of color, his great tool. After his famous trip to Tunisia, he was impressed by its light. So much so that he wrote in his diary: "Color possesses me, I have no need to pursue it, I know it possesses me forever. I and color are one and the same, I am a painter." And it was from then on, when he begins to write about color theory. He also begins his "Writings on the theory of form and design", which assume a very relevant importance in Modern Art. His published essays The Thinking Eye and The nature of nature are a compilation of his reflections on modern art and the classes he gave at the Bauhaus in the 1920s. As was to be expected, Paul Klee also excelled as a teacher.

With the publication of his personal notebooks by the Zentrum Paul Klee, a door is opened to the prestigious mind of the artist. A treasure that transports us back a century, where his futuristic vision coexists perfectly with the present.