(1879-1940) Swiss artist. He was one of the most original and prolific artists of the 20th century, painting over 760 panel paintings and 9,000 works. A talented violinist, he played for Berne Symphony Orchestra until 1906, when he settled in Munich, and joined the Blaue Reiter group 1912. He taught at the Bauhaus school of design from 1921 to 1931, when he took up a Professorship at the Dusseldorf Art Academy, from which post he was dismissed by the Nazis in 1933, when he returned to Switzerland. Endlessly inventive and playful, his many works are an exploration of the potential of line, plane, and color. Suggesting a childlike innocence, they are based on the belief in a reality beyond appearances. Twittering Machine 1922 (Museum of Modern Art, New York) is typical.
Klee traveled with the painter August Macke to Tunisia 1914, a trip that transformed his sense of color. His influential views on art were presented in Pedagogical Sketchbook 1925. The Klee Foundation, Berne, has a large collection of his work.