Paul Klee

Book Description

This colorful monograph features and surveys the 150 best-known works of Paul Klee, an artist famous for the playful complexity of his multi-media images. Klee never ceased his quest for new subjects and sources of inspiration, and he experimented with geometry, materials, and color to represent fauna and flora, music, the diurnal, and the nocturnal.

As a teacher at the famous Bauhaus School in Weimar, Klee played an important role in the evolution of applied arts. Author Jean-Louis Ferrier provides an insightful text that explains the complex, often misunderstood work of Klee. In addition, this monograph includes extracts from Klee's theatrical work, including the famous Pedagogical Sketchbook used by his students at the Bauhaus.

Comprehensive and fresh, this new study of Paul Klee will delight students and enthusiasts of twentieth-century art.

Customer Reviews:

Huge Hardback That Captures Klee Exhibit of 1980s.......2001-09-19

This hardback was issued by the museum when the Klee show toured the USA. It was a spectacular show that captured the essence of this 20th century artistic genius and I was fortunate enough to see the show and buy the book. Paul Klee explored just about every art style there was in his quest to develop modern art and his seemingly simplest paintings were usually his best. Klee lived an often traumatic life as well and when you are exposed to all of his works, you can easily see that quality in his paintings. I found the most eloquent ones were the ones he did as he approached his own painful death. The book does a tour de force job of covering the paintings which were in the show, which is the way the show now lives on.

Careful and thorough introduction to Klee.......2001-07-05

This is an efficient and careful monograph that succeeds on many levels. Grohmann was Klee's biographer and longtime friend. He is respectful without being sycophantic, and thorough but never plodding. He uses a variety of source materials, including Klee's own writings (diaries and letters). Grohmann establishes Klee's lasting importance to art and to painting by asserting, "It is as though he were still among us, to be consulted on every problem of life and art." Grohmann's generous(40 pages, 58 illustrations) and lively essay on Klee is also charming and personal. It combines biography, criticism, a wealth of references, and thought-provoking appreciation. It's generously illustrated with photographs of Klee and his studio, plus ink, tusche, chalk, and pencil drawings, collage, watercolor, tempera, and oil paintings, a woodcut study, and etchings.

The text that accompanies the following forty color plates (a selection of paintings) is the calm, clear art criticism that Grohmann is so good at. The plates' reproduced colors are good but not great. What's best is that Grohmann is such an able teacher. He describes each painting straightforwardly, and then asks intelligent questions, suggests answers that seem well-thought-out, and inspires one to further thought and research. His friendship with Klee gave him some additional understanding of his friend's work and lifelong passions and motives.

A very worthwhile book on a great artist.

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Paul Klee: Hand Puppets

Totally amazing unseen puppet photos and info!

Paul Klee: Hand Puppets (Emanating)
Christine Hopfengart , Osamu Okuda , and Paul Klee
Manufacturer: Hatje Cantz Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Puppetry: A World History

Puppets, Masks, and Performing Objects

Strings, Hands, Shadows: A Modern Puppet History (DIAgram (Detroit Institute of Arts))

Rehearsing With Gods: Photographs and Essays on the Bread & Puppet Theater

Puppets and Puppet Theatre

ASIN: 3775717404
Release Date: 2006-10-15

Book Description

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.

Customer Reviews:

Paul Klee: Hand Puppets.......2007-01-12

This is a great book for more "out there" puppeteers, artists and lovers of Paul Klee's art. His son, Felix, reminisces about his childhood with his artistic Papa, who built whimsical, sometimes scary and political, puppets for his young son's enjoyment. There are many photos of the restored puppets and Felix's stories about them and his father are charming.

Totally amazing unseen puppet photos and info!.......2006-10-14

I just got this newly published book and it is simply wonderful. I have a huge puppet book library and having just skimmed through it, I am thrilled to see all photos/puppets are ones I've never seen anywhere else. The puppets of Klee are an absolute inspiration, and I am so glad there is a new book that introduces them to a new generation. The only other book about these puppets is in the range of $500.00 if you can even find one, so this is an absolute steal, and probably will become collectible as well. This is put out by the new Paul Klee museum and text and photos are all fascinating. You must have this for your puppet library!

Average customer rating:

A Great Book
Excellent tool

Pedagogical Sketchbook
Paul Klee
Manufacturer: Faber & Faber
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0571086187

Customer Reviews:

A Great Book.......2006-03-14

This book is simply great - I recommend it highly to any serious student of art. It is one of the classics of modern art, of interest to artists, teachers, students, theoreticians, historians, and fans of Paul Klee. Pedagogical Sketchbook is the distilled essence of Klee's concepts of art production. Created in 1923 as a teaching tool for his students at the Bauhaus, it was the second of fourteen Bauhaus Books edited by Walter Gropius and L. Moholy-Nagy. First published in England in 1953 and the United States in 1960, it has been an important influence on generations of practicing artists and theoreticians.

An abstraction of his ideas on teaching and creating art, it can sometimes be difficult to follow, since it assumes that some narrative and examples will be added during classes. However, Sibyl Moholy-Nagy writes a narrative introduction that explores Paul Klee's aesthetic ideas related to teaching, and a concluding note with brief suggestions as to how the sketchbook can be used for teaching or artistic research.

Titled " Initial Plan for a Section of the Theoretical Instruction at the German Bauhaus", this book is a set of working notes that are the basis for art instruction at the Bauhaus - you can almost see Paul Klee presenting the ideas in a class. Beginning with the primary graphic element of a point moving forward to create a line, it is a course on how to make art based on Klee's deeply considered artistic process. It consists of step-by-step lessons, with abstract written concepts that analyze artistic process, and drawings that are examples of how those ideas can be put into practice.

Although it was based on the then-current 2D graphic arts of painting, drawing, and printmaking, it is also valuable for current artists working in time based and interactive forms since it considers aesthetics and structure as the result of process. In a relatively short space, it investigates a wide range of practical and conceptual approaches to art making, from line, to plane, to structure and composition, to materials, physics, symbols, and motion. Its well-considered concepts enable artists of any aesthetic persuasion to apply its ideas and lessons to their own work. It requires concentration to understand, but it is truly worth the effort.

Excellent tool.......2003-07-01

I found this book to be a wonderful tool, once understood... and that may take some time!!

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Paul Klee: His Work and Thought
Marcel Franciscono
Manufacturer: University Of Chicago Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0226259900

Book Description

Marcel Franciscono offers an exhaustive historical and critical study of
Klee's artistic personality and thought. Drawing extensively on
documentation published since 1940, Franciscono highlights the
extraordinary range of artistic, literary, and philosophical speculation Klee
brought to his work. The portrait that emerges is one of a great comic
artist, an ironist whose most characteristic pictures pit beauty of form and
color against the dubious nature of things, yet one whose satiric depictions
of everyday life extend to the most rarified evocations of nature.

"There is no comparable book in the recent Klee literature.
Marcel Franciscono introduces the reader to the artist and, in turn, to all
the major Klee problems uncovered by specialists working in one or
another area of the master's work. The result is a rich symposium in
which all these opinions, as well as the relevant biographical facts, are
returned to individual works of art, illuminating them exquisitely. In this
low-keyed fashion emerges the splendid general study that is required of
every generation for a great artist."—Daniel Robbins, Union College

Dreaming Pictures: Paul Klee (Adventures in Art)

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Book with many ways of teaching art
A book guaranteed to fascinate all ages

Dreaming Pictures: Paul Klee (Adventures in Art)
Paul Klee , and Juergen von Schemm
Manufacturer: Prestel Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 3791318756

Book Description

With the help of amusing questions and comments from children, the viewer's eyes are taken on a tour of Klee's pictures. 'Dreaming Pictures' provides an insight into the artist's composition, unlocking the paintings' mysteries and revealing the pleasures to be found by entering Klee's dream world.

Customer Reviews:

Book with many ways of teaching art.......2007-02-23

If you are in early education this book is great for children to see line and patterns. Paul Klee is know for his childlike artwork and it gives children ideas of what to look for in his paintings. The history of his life is also very interesting and that is on the last 2 pages.

A book guaranteed to fascinate all ages.......2001-01-23

This charming book is presented as a children's book, but is suitable for all ages. The large, beautiful illustrations and reproductions coupled with the whimsical text make this imaginative book a delight to look at and read. Small children will appreciate the bright colors of the artworks, and the parents will appreciate the inventive way the author introduces an artist to children - without pretension or difficulty. Any parent wishing to raise culturally educated children should buy this book today! (PS: I say this with experience, both my 3 year old and my 10 year old love this book, but for very different reasons -- and I even catch my husband flipping through it at times)

Average customer rating:

Worthwhile

Klee and America
Jenny Anger , Vivian Endicott Barnett , Michael Baumgartner , Charles Haxthausen , Osamu Okuda , Josef Helfenstein , and Paul Klee
Manufacturer: Hatje Cantz Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 3775717234
Release Date: 2006-03-01

Book Description

Paul Klee was a leading figure in European Modernism, and his acclaim at home was quickly matched in the United States, where both private collectors and major museums sought out his work. Klee and America explores the reasons for that enthusiastic reception, especially during the 1930s and 1940s, while the artist was being targeted in Hitler's campaign against Entartete Kunst (degenerate art). Just as the European market for Klee's work was collapsing, American patrons and curators were gobbling it up. And after he had been removed from his teaching post in Dsseldorf and had returned to his childhood home in Switzerland, Klee continued to be represented by a number of German-Jewish art dealers who had emigrated to the U.S. Eventually his work landed in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim, among others. Foremost among Klee's earliest American collectors was Katherine Dreier, whose Societe Anonyme, founded with artists Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray, sponsored the exhibitions of pioneering abstract art in which his paintings were first shown in America. In Los Angeles, Walter and Louise Arensberg assembled a vast collection of Klee's paintings. In 1939, Alfred Barr Jr. bought a first canvas for MoMA. Klee and America examines this history and offers an impressive selection of Klee's finest "American" works, both paintings and drawings.

Customer Reviews:

Worthwhile.......2006-10-20

There are approx 1150 works by Klee in various collections across America. This book accompanies the "Klee and America" exhibition on view at the Neue Gallerie, NY; The Phillips Collection, DC; The Merril Collection, Houston. The book offers an in-depth exploration of what attracted the various collectors to Klee, the circumstances during which Klee painted and how they affected him (WW2), and the influence of Klee on American art. Approx 100 works from the exhibit are illustrated in high quality, plus photos etc. For anyone interested in the world of Paul Klee this is a worthy book to add to your collection.

Paul Klee: Masterpieces of the Djerassi Collection

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Paul Klee: Masterpieces of the Djerassi Collection
Paul Klee
Manufacturer: Prestel Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Book Description

Paul Klee, best known for his mastery of color and semi-abstract patchwork paintings of squares, completed more than 10,000 paintings, drawings, and etchings during his life. His work is difficult to classify but widely admired and highly sought after. Carl Djerassi, scientist, novelist, philanthropist, most famous for inventing the birth control pill, was a great fan of Klee and amassed one of the most important private collections of his work in the world.

Customer Reviews:

Paul Klee.......2004-08-03

I was not a fan of this artist until I saw his work in a museum. It was there that I discovered a unique array of creativity and imagination that brought about colors, lines, forms, music and rhythm all within a painting.
This book gave a brief yet descriptive history about one of the less talked abstract artists in history. His eclectic painting techniques and style grasped the attention of many different spectators.
I enjoyed reading and sharing this book to others, especially kids. The book opened the eyes of students who found it difficult to find their inner creativity. The book also talks about how music and rhythm are incorporated into his abstract and colorful paintings.

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The Book Every Aspiring Artist Should Keep On Hand

The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898-1918
Paul Klee , and Felix Klee (editor)
Manufacturer: University of California Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0520006534

Book Description

Paul Klee was endowed with a rice and many-sided personality that was continually spilling over into forms of expression other than his painting and that made him one of the most extraordinary phenomena of modern European art. These abilities have left their record in the four intimate Diaries in which he faithfully recorded the events of his inner and outer life from his ninteenth to his fortieth year. Here, together with recollections of his childhood in Bern, his relations with his family and such friends as Kandinsky, Marc, Macke, and many others, his observations on nature and people, his trips to Italy and Tunisia, and his military service, the read will find Klee's crucial experience with literature and music, as well as many of his essential ideas about his own artistic technique and the creative process.

Customer Reviews:

The Book Every Aspiring Artist Should Keep On Hand.......2001-05-30

When I picked up the Paul Klee Diaries it fell open to the sentence every artist must secretly yearn to see: "...I am still incapable of painting, in spite of my sharp observation of tonal values and inspite of my clever way of determining the proper gradations of light and dark." Well! If he had trouble, there must be hope for the rest of us! The diaries, edited by his son and published posthumously, cover his 19th to 40th years as he travels, attends concerts, draws, paints and engages in intense artistic discourse with friends like Kandinsky and Macke. An exquisite writer, Klee captures whole experiences in a few brief words. The book is a chronicle of the development of both the artist and the art of his time. I especially liked the precise descriptions of his drawing experiments and periodic review of his progress. His grasp of techniques and insights into the creative process can be returned to again and again.

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Beautiful, and a bargain!

Paul Klee: Selected by Genius, 1917-33
Ernst-Gerhard Guse , Christian Rumelin , and Victoria Salley
Manufacturer: Prestel Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 3791324950

Book Description

Produced in close cooperation with the Klee Foundation in Bern, this catlogues gathers together the artist's outstanding masterpieces of the years 1917-1933. This extraordinary survey, which includes works which Klee originally intended to keep for himself, has been made possible by loans from the collection of Angela Rosengart in Lucerne, the Klee Foundation in Bern, and many private collectors. Many of these works are being presented to a wide audience for the first time.

Customer Reviews:

Beautiful, and a bargain!.......2007-10-03

This is one of the most beautiful and in-depth studies on the art of Paul Klee I have ever seen. The essays give wonderfully in-depth background on Klee's creative process, based on the study of the works that he kept for his personal collection. In many of these works we find the archetypes that informed most of his very personal and highly expressive iconography. The works in the exhibition, 80 works, are all top-quality Klee, and offer a well-rounded selection of works created during his most prolific and creative period (1917-1933). But there are also works included up to 1939, as well. Prestel has really outdone themselves in this incredibly splendid publication. The design, printing, and quality of manufacturing are all first-rate, and the price is astonishingly low...even the Amazon list price is a bargain, and this superior volume is discounted even more. Anyone with an interest in 20th Century art will absolutely want to own this gorgeous book, and if you are a fan of the work of Klee, as I am, you will find it an indispensible addition to your library.

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