''Paul Klee Notebooks'' is a two-volume work by the Swiss-born artist

Paul Klee Paul Klee (; 18 December 1879 – 29 June 1940) was a Swiss-born German artist. His highly individual style was influenced by movements in art that included expressionism, cubism, and surrealism. Klee was a natural draftsman who experimented wi ...

that collects his lectures at the

Bauhaus school The Staatliches Bauhaus (), commonly known as the , was a German art school operational from 1919 to 1933 that combined crafts and the fine arts.Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 4th edn., 2009), , pp. 64� ...

s in 1920s Germany and his other main essays on

modern art Modern art includes artistic work produced during the period extending roughly from the 1860s to the 1970s, and denotes the styles and philosophies of the art produced during that era. The term is usually associated with art in which the tradit ...

. These works are considered so important for understanding modern art that they are compared to the importance that Leonardo's '' A Treatise on Painting'' had for

Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) is a Periodization, period of history and a European cultural movement covering the 15th and 16th centuries. It marked the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and was characterized by an effort to revive and sur ...

.The private Klee: Works by Paul Klee from the Bürgi Collection
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, 12 August - 20 October 2000

Herbert Read Sir Herbert Edward Read, (; 4 December 1893 – 12 June 1968) was an English art historian, poet, literary critic and philosopher, best known for numerous books on art, which included influential volumes on the role of art in education. Read wa ...

called the collection "the most complete presentation of the principles of design ever made by a modern artist – it constitutes the Principia Aesthetica of a new era of art, in which Klee occupies a position comparable to Newton's in the realm of physics." The final work was edited by Swiss artist Jürg Spiller and Marcel Franciscono criticized Spiller's collection of Klee's notes as "extensive but drastically rearranged", and added that the lectures "are interspersed with later notes and in part rearranged. Despite Spiller's notation of their sources in Klee's manuscripts, it is not always possible to determine from his arrangement where a lecture leaves off and an interpolation begins."Franciscono (1991) Part 6 'The Bauhaus and Düsseldorf', chap. 'Klee's theory courses', pp. 245-52 and under 'notes to pages 245-54' p.365 In an earlier 1925 shorter book, ''Pädagogisches Skizzenbuch'' ('Pedagogical Sketchbook'), Klee published a condensation of his lectures at the Weimar Bauhaus.

Volume I - Essays

* 1923 ''Wege des Naturstudiums''
Ways of Studying Nature
) * 1924 ''Über moderne Kunst'' ('On Modern Art'), lecture held at Paul Klee's exhibition at the Kunstverein in Jena on 26 January 1924

Volume I - Lectures

* 1922 ''Beiträge zur bildnerischen Formlehre'' ('Contributions to a pictorial theory of form', part of his 1921-2 lectures at the Bauhaus)

Volume II

Translations

The original title is ''Schriften zur Form und Gestaltungslehre'' ('Writings on form and design theory'), and the two volumes are titled ''Band I: Das bildnerische Denken'' ('Volume I: the creative thinking') and ''Band 2: Unendliche Naturgeschichte'' ('Volume 2: Infinite Natural History'); they were edited by Jürg Spiller and first published in Switzerland (

Basel Basel ( ; ), also known as Basle ( ), ; ; ; . is a city in northwestern Switzerland on the river Rhine (at the transition from the High Rhine, High to the Upper Rhine). Basel is Switzerland's List of cities in Switzerland, third-most-populo ...

) and Germany (

Stuttgart Stuttgart (; ; Swabian German, Swabian: ; Alemannic German, Alemannic: ; Italian language, Italian: ; ) is the capital city, capital and List of cities in Baden-Württemberg by population, largest city of the States of Germany, German state of ...

) by publishing house Benno Schwab, in 1956 and 1964 respectively. The subtitles of the two volumes were rendered, for the English translation, 'The thinking eye' and 'The Nature of Nature'. The Italian translation is called ''Teoria della forma e della figurazione'', and the two volumes are subtitled ''Il pensiero immaginabile'' and ''Storia naturale infinita''. The French edition is called ''Contributions à la théorie de la forme picturale''.

Online edition

In 2016, the

Zentrum Paul Klee The Zentrum Paul Klee is a museum dedicated to the artist Paul Klee, located in Bern, Switzerland Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a landlocked country located in west-central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the sou ...

museum in

Bern Bern (), or Berne (), ; ; ; . is the ''de facto'' Capital city, capital of Switzerland, referred to as the "federal city".; ; ; . According to the Swiss constitution, the Swiss Confederation intentionally has no "capital", but Bern has gov ...

Switzerland Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a landlocked country located in west-central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland ...

, published digital versions of Klee's notebooks on their website.

Notes

References

*Marcel Franciscono ''Paul Klee: His Work and Thought'', University of Chicago Press, 406 pages, 1991, .

External links

* {{authority control Weimar culture Paul Klee 1956 books 1964 books Books of lectures Art history books German anthologies German non-fiction books Bauhaus University, Weimar

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