Paul Klee Intro and Youth

In the early winter of 2023 the Fundació Miro in Barcelona hosted an exhibition jointly with the Zentrum Paul Klee: 'Paul Klee and the secrets of nature.' We decided to go. What a wonderful way to get to know a city and an artist we love. The initial 'chapters' of this blog show 8 installments of pictures from the Paul Klee exhibition. Then, there are 15 installments from in and around Barcelona: buildings by Antoni Gaudi, the Catalonian Museum of Art, and a hike up Montserrat.

In every case, the blog will only show 2-10 chapters at one time. You can keep track by the Table of Contents on the right hand side column. And/or, look for the button 'Older Posts' at the bottom right to go back in time.

There are two chapters of February 2023 images from Zurich, Switzerland and five chapters of paintings from the Kunsthaus Museum in Zurich.

There follows a London February 2023 segment: one installment from an exhibit of Italian painter Giorgio Morandi, five chapters of pictures from a large Cezanne exhibition at the Tate Modern in London, a break of three chapters from Kew Gardens, one from the Courtauld Collection, one from the National Gallery, two from the British Museum and we finish at Hampstead Heath.

Paul Klee, 1879 - 1940 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Klee

'Paul Klee and the secrets of nature:' I learned that Paul Klee had been trained in a traditional realistic tradition of nature observation. Over the course of his life as an artist, he distanced himself from detailed realistic depictions and, at the same time, attempted to portray the inner essence or character: of animals, weather, plants, trees, landscapes. Nature was usually his teacher and subject matter. He also learned from his son and much of his art shows a primitive or childlike technique. There was, however, deep thinking and reflection in his approach. In his own words:

"The artist of today is more than an improved camera; he is more complex, richer, and wider. He is a creature on earth and a creature within the whole, that is to say, a creature on a star among stars... The object grows beyond its appearance through our knowledge of its inner being, through the knowledge that the thing is more than its outward aspect suggests..... Nature can afford to be prodigal in everything, the artist must be frugal down to the smallest detail. Nature is garrulous to the point of confusion, let the artist be truly taciturn... If my works sometimes produce a primitive impression, this 'primitiveness' is explained by my discipline, which consists in reducing everything to a few steps. It is no more than economy; that is, the ultimate professional awareness. Which is to say, the opposite of real primitiveness."

The few early works shown below in this chapter are from Paul Klee's early years, showing his training in realistic detailed nature studies. It is especially impressive in one exhibit to see where he went when you can see where he came from, and the thought and feeling behind every disciplined step on that journey. These four drawings were done before he was 20 and before he decided on a career in art.