Paul Klee Quotes

68 Sourced Quotes

Nature can afford to be prodigal in everything, the artist must be frugal down to the last detail.
Nature is garrulous to the point of confusion, let the artist be truly taciturn.

Paul Klee
The main thing now is not to paint precociously but to be, or at least become, an individual. The art of mastering life is the prerequisite for all further forms of expression, whether they are paintings, sculptures, tragedies, or musical compositions.

Paul Klee
Art does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible.

Paul Klee
In the final analysis, a drawing simply is no longer a drawing, no matter how self-sufficient its execution may be. It is a symbol, and the more profoundly the imaginary lines of projection meet higher dimensions, the better.

Paul Klee
It is precisely the way which is productive - this is the essential thing; becoming is more important than being...

Paul Klee
In earlier days, even as a child, the beauty of landscapes was quite clear to me. A background for the soul's moods. Now dangerous moments occur when Nature tries to devour me; at such times I am annihilated, but at peace. This would be fine for old people but I... I am my life's debtor, for I have given promises...

Paul Klee
What my art probably lacks is a kind of passionate humanity... There is no sensuous relationship, not even the noblest, between myself and the many.

Paul Klee
When intuition joins exact research, the progress of understanding will be accelerated astoundingly.

Paul Klee
All is well with me. The rain doesn't reach me, my room is well heated, what more can one ask for? There's no shortage of work, either...

Paul Klee
Light and the rational forms are locked in combat; light sets them into motion, bends what is straight, makes parallels oval, inscribes circles in the intervals, makes the intervals active.

Paul Klee
The worst state of affairs is when science begins to concern itself with art.

Paul Klee
Chosen are those artists who penetrate to the region of that secret place where primeval power nurtures all evolution. There, where the powerhouse of all time and space call it brain or heart of creation activates every function, who is the artist who would not dwell there?

Paul Klee
The birds are to be envied: They avoid Thinking about the trees and the roots. Agile, self contented, all day long they swing And sing, perched on ultimate end.

Paul Klee
A long struggle lies in store for me in this field of color.

Paul Klee
By using patches of color and tone it is possible to capture every natural impression in the simplest way, freshly and immediately.

Paul Klee
In my productive activity, every time a type grows beyond the stage of its genesis, and I have about reached the goal, the intensity gets lost very quickly, and I have to look for new ways.

Paul Klee
A line comes into being. It goes out for a walk, so to speak, aimlessly for the sake of the walk.

Paul Klee
Frightened, I jump up from the bank, the struggle begins anew. Bitterness has returned. I am not Pan in the reed, I am merely a human being and want to climb a few steps, but really climb them...

Paul Klee
In earlier times artists liked to show what was actually visible... nowadays we are concerned with reality, rather than the merely visible.

Paul Klee
All art is a memory of age-old things, dark things, whose fragments live on in the artist.

Paul Klee
Colour possesses me. It will always possess me. That is the meaning of this happy hour: colour and I are one. I am a painter.

Paul Klee
Color is primarily Quality. Secondly, it is also Weight, for it has not only color value but also brilliance. Thirdly, it is Measure, for besides Quality and Weight, it has its limits, its area, and its extent, all of which may be measured. Tone value is primarily Weight, but in its extent and its boundaries, it is also Measure. Line, however, is solely Measure.

Paul Klee
We [at the Bauhaus, in Dessau - where Klee was art teacher with Kandinsky] construct and construct, and yet intuition still has its uses. Without it we can do a lot, but not everything... When intuition is joined to exact research it speeds the progress of exact research..

Paul Klee
He neither serves nor rules, he transmits. His position is humble and the beauty at the crown is not his own. He is merely a channel.

Paul Klee
Each energy calls for its complementary energy to achieve self-contained stability based on the play of energies.

Paul Klee
An active line on a walk, moving freely without a goal. A walk for walk's sake. The agent is a point that shifts position.
On Drawing

Paul Klee
For the understanding of a picture a chair is needed. Why a chair? To prevent the legs, as they tire, from interfering with the mind

Paul Klee
These are primitive beginnings in art, such as one usually finds in ethnographic collections or at home in one's nursery. Do not laugh, reader! Children also have artistic ability, and there is wisdom in their having it! The more helpless they are, the more instructive are the examples they furnish us; and they must be preserved from corruption at an early age. Parallel phenomena are provided by the works of the mentally diseased; neither childish behaviour nor madness are insulting words here, as they commonly are. All this is to be taken very seriously, more seriously than all the public galleries, when it comes to reforming today's art.

Paul Klee
When looking at any significant work of art, remember that a more significant one probably has had to be sacrificed.

Paul Klee
My mirror probes down to the heart. I write words on the forehead and around the corners of the mouth. My human faces are truer than the real ones.

Paul Klee