Paul Klee (German pronunciation: [ˈkleː]; 18 December 1879 – 29 June 1940) was born in Münchenbuchsee, Switzerland, and is considered both a German and a Swiss painter.

Klee has been variously associated with Expressionism, Cubism, Futurism, Surrealism, and Abstraction, but his pictures are difficult to classify. He generally worked in isolation from his peers, and interpreted new art trends in his own way. He was inventive in his methods and technique. Klee worked in many different media—oil paint, watercolor, ink, pastel, etching, and others. He often combined them into one work. He used canvas, burlap, muslin, linen, gauze, cardboard, metal foils, fabric, wallpaper, and newsprint. Klee employed spray paint, knife application, stamping, glazing, and impasto, and mixed media such as oil with watercolor, water color with pen and India ink, and oil with tempera.

He was a natural draftsman, and through long experimentation developed a mastery of color and tonality. Many of his works combine these skills. He uses a great variety of color palettes from nearly monochromatic to highly polychromatic.

His works often have a fragile child-like quality to them and are usually on a small scale. He often used geometric forms as well as letters, numbers, and arrows, and combined them with figures of animals and people. Some works were completely abstract. Many of his works and their titles reflect his dry humor and varying moods; some express political convictions. They frequently allude to poetry, music and dreams and sometimes include words or musical notation.

The later works are distinguished by spidery hieroglyph-like symbols. Rainer Maria Rilke wrote about Klee in 1921, "Even if you hadn’t told me he plays the violin, I would have guessed that on many occasions his drawings were transcriptions of music." Pamela Kort observed: "Klee's 1933 drawings present their beholder with an unparalleled opportunity to glimpse a central aspect of his aesthetics that has remained largely unappreciated: his lifelong concern with the possibilities of parody and wit. Herein lies their real significance, particularly for an audience unaware that Klee's art has political dimensions."


"The painter should not paint what he sees, but what will be seen"

"Art does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible"

"He has found his style, when he cannot do otherwise"

"to emphasize only the beautiful seems to me to be like
a mathematical system that only concerns itself with positive numbers"

"Color possesses me. I don't have to pursue it. It will posses me always, I know it. That is the meaning of this happy hour: Color and I are one.I am a painter

"A single day is enough to make us a little larger or, another time, a little smaller"

"I CANNOT BE GRASPED IN THE HERE AND NOW. FOR I LIVE JUST AS WELL WITH THE DEAD AS WITH THE UNBORN. SOMEWHAT CLOSER TO THE HEART OF CREATION THAN USUAL BUT FAR FROM CLOSER ENOUGH."
나는 이세상의 언어만으로는 이해되지 않을 것이다.왜냐하면 나는 죽은자와도 아직 태어나지 않은자와도 행복하게 살 수가 있기 때문이다.일반 사람보다 창조의 핵심에 가까와지긴 했으나 아직 충분하다고는 말 할 수 없다.