1879-1940, Swiss painter, graphic artist, and art theorist, b. near Bern. Klee's enormous production (more than 9,000 works) is unique in that it represents the successful combination of his sophisticated theories of abstraction with a very personal inventiveness that has the appearance of great innocence. The son of a music teacher, he was himself a musician, and musical analogies permeate his writing. He traveled through Europe, open to many artistic influences. The most important of these were the works of Blake, Beardsley, Goya, Ensor, and, especially, Cézanne. In 1911 he became associated with the Blaue Reiter group and later exhibited...
