A pioneering modernist of unrivaled creative output, 

 (1879–1940) counts among the truly defining artists of the twentieth century, exploring and expanding the terrain of avant-garde art through work that ranges from stunning colorist grids to evocative graphic productions. Klee taught for a decade, from 1921 to 1931, at the Bauhaus, the famed German art and design school, and the novelty of his work and ideas established him as one of the institution’s foremost instructors. He was associated with some of the most important art movements of the twentieth century, such as expressionism, cubism, and surrealism, yet his practice remained highly individualistic and distinct; it was never encapsulated by the concerns of a movement or reducible to the modernist binary of abstraction and figuration.

Klee was born a German citizen in Münchenbuchsee near Bern, Switzerland. In 1911, he had his first solo exhibition at the Galerie Thannhauser in Munich. In the same year, he met fellow artist Wassily Kandinsky and became acquainted with the expressionist group Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider), exhibiting with them at their second show, in 1912. Later that year, after becoming familiar with the art of Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, and Robert Delaunay during a trip to Paris, Klee began incorporating cubist and other innovative colorist techniques and ideas into his own distinct practice. Two years later, in 1914, Klee traveled to Tunisia with his friends the artists August Macke and Louis Moilliet, a revelatory experience that the artist credits with further awakening him to color. In 1921, he was appointed to the faculty of the Bauhaus by Walter Gropius, the founder and first director of the school, where he taught and worked as a "form master" from 1921 to 1925, while the school was in Weimar, and as a professor from 1926 to 1931, when the school was located in Dessau.

The renowned gallerist Hans Goltz, a fierce supporter of modern art and Paul Klee’s first general agent, from 1919 to 1925, staged a retrospective of Klee’s art in 1920 at his gallery in Munich. Alfred H. Barr, Jr., the first director of The Museum of Modern Art, New York, had become familiar with Klee’s art in the 1920s and presented an exhibition of his work in March of 1930, the institution’s first solo show of a living European artist. In 1935, his work was the subject of major retrospectives at the Kunsthalle Bern and the Kunsthalle Basel. In 1940, shortly before he passed away, Klee had a solo exhibition of new work at the Kunsthaus Zürich.

Important posthumous presentations of Klee’s work include a traveling memorial exhibition in 1941 that was organized by The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and toured additional venues across the United States, including the San Francisco Museum of Art. His work has been the subject of major retrospectives and traveling solo exhibitions at institutions including, among others, Tate Gallery, London (1945); Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, which traveled to Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels (1957); Akademie der Künste, Berlin (1961); Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (1967 and 1993); Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris (1969–1970); Seibu Museum, Tokyo (1980); and The Museum of Modern Art, New York, which traveled to the Cleveland Museum of Art, and the Kunstmuseum Bern (1987–1988).

Since 2000, numerous exhibitions on Klee have explored various aspects of his art and career. From 2003 to 2004, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, presented 

. An exhibition focusing on Klee’s impact in the United States, 

, was featured at the Neue Galerie, New York, and traveled to The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC, and The Menil Collection, Houston, from 2006 to 2007. 

 was shown at the National Museum of Modern Art (MOMAK), Kyoto, and traveled to the National Museum of Modern Art (MOMAT), Tokyo, in 2011.

Among major exhibitions of his work during the past decade are 

The EY Exhibition: Paul Klee – Making Visible

 at Tate Modern, London from 2013 to 2014; the Centre Pompidou, Paris, held 

 in 2016; Fondation Beyeler, Basel, hosted the retrospective 

 from 2017 to 2018; Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, featured 

 in 2018; and Museo delle culture, Milan, presented 

Paul Klee: Alle origini dell’arte (Paul Klee: At the origins of art)

 debuted at Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, São Paulo, and traveled to Centro Cultural do Brasil, Rio de Janeiro, and Centro Cultural do Brasil, Belo Horizonte. 

Klee in North Africa: 1914, Tunisia | Egypt, 1928

 was on view at the Museum Berggruen, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin from 2020 to 2021. In 2022, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art presented the two-person exhibition 

Paul Klee & Lee Mullican: Outward Sight and Inner Vision. 

Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona, presented

 was on view at David Zwirner New York in 2024.

In 1947, after the death of Paul Klee’s widow, four prominent collectors in Bern established the Paul Klee Foundation, which was housed in the Kunstmuseum Bern until 2004. On the occasion of a large donation of works from the Klee Family, the foundation was absorbed into a new museum dedicated to the artist. In 2005, the Zentrum Paul Klee opened as an independent institution and research center with a building designed by Renzo Piano. Klee’s work is in the permanent collections of countless major museums around the world.

Dawn Ades is professor emerita of the history and theory of art at the University of Essex and professor of the history of art at the Royal Academy of Arts. In 2013, she was made CBE for services to higher education.

Dawn Ades

Richard Tuttle’s often poetic objects defy genre through exploration of material form. Sometimes, Tuttle crafts fragile assemblages of unassuming materials, like paper wire, string, and cloth. While trespassing constraints of framing, Tuttle manages to investigate the potential of line, activating marginal space whose volume becomes expressive too. Like Paul Klee, Tuttle draws upon the other-than-conscious and the richness of the overlooked. A book of Tuttle’s collected writings from 1966 to 2019, 

, was published by Walther König in 2020.

Richard Tuttle

Text by Dawn Ades. Poetry by Richard Tuttle

The year before he died, in what was one of the most difficult yet prolific periods of his life, Paul Klee created his most surprising and innovative works.

In 1939, the year before his death from a long illness and against a backdrop of sociopolitical turmoil and the outbreak of World War II, Paul Klee worked with a vigor and inventiveness that rivaled even the most productive periods of his youth. This book illuminates the artist’s response to his personal difficulties and the era’s broader realities through imagery that is tirelessly inventive—by turns political, solemn, playful, humorous, and poetic.

The works featured testify to Klee’s restless drive to experiment with form and material. His use of adhesive, grease, oil, chalk, and watercolor, among other media, resulted in surfaces that are not only visually striking, but also highly tactile and original. Not unlike a diary, the drawings are often meditative reflections on the pains and pleasures of life—their titles, among them 

Renowned art historian Dawn Ades looks at this group of paintings and drawings in the context of their time and as indicative of a pivotal moment in art history. Moved by this late period of Klee’s oeuvre, American artist Richard Tuttle responds to specific works in the form of a dialogical poem. This stunning publication highlights the novelty and ingenuity of Klee’s late works, which deeply affected the generation of artists—including Anni Albers, Jean Dubuffet, Mark Tobey, and Zao Wou-Ki—that emerged after World War II and continues to captivate artists and viewers alike today.

Paul Klee: 1939

Paul Klee: 1939 | Books

David Zwirner is an art gallery with locations in New York, Los Angeles, London, Paris and Hong Kong. We present physical and online exhibitions, podcasts, books, and more.