Paul Klee Quotes & Sayings

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

The work of art is above all a process of creation. — Paul Klee

Color has got me. I no longer need to chase after it. It has got me for ever. I know it. That is the meaning of this happy hour. — Paul Klee

The beautiful, which is perhaps inseparable from art, is not after all tied to the subject, but to the pictorial representation. In this way and in no other does art overcome the ugly without avoiding it. — Paul Klee

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

To achieve vital harmony in a picture it must be constructed out of parts in themselves incomplete, brought into harmony only at the last stroke. — Paul Klee

Nothing can be rushed. It must grow, it should grow of itself, and if the time ever comes for that work, then so much the better! — Paul Klee

Like people, a picture has a skeleton, muscles and skin. — Paul Klee

From the root, the sap rises up into the artist, flows through him, flows to his eye. Overwhelmed and activated by the force of the current, he conveys his vision into his work. And yet, standing at his appointed place as the trunk of the tree, he does nothing other than gather and pass on what rises from the depths. He neither serves nor commands he transmits. His position is humble. And the beauty at the crown is not his own; it has merely passed through him. — Paul Klee

One does not lash hat lies at a distance. The foibles that we ridicule must at least be a little bit our own. Only then will the work be a part of our own flesh. The garden must be weeded. — Paul Klee

The longer a line, the more of the time element it contains. Distance is time whereas a surface is apprehended more in terms of the moment. — 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

There is no substitute for intuition. — Paul Klee

Art does not reproduce what is visible, it makes things visible. — 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

A single day is enough to make us a little larger or, another time, a little smaller. — 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

Reduction! One wants to say more than nature and one makes the impossible mistake of wanting to say it with more means than she, instead of fewer. — Paul Klee

A drawing is simply a line going for a walk. — Paul Klee

Art makes something a lot more visible or audible. — Paul Klee

Color and I are one. I am a painter. — Paul Klee

Children also have artistic ability, and there is wisdom in there having it! The more helpless they are, the more instructive are the examples they furnish us; and they must be preserved free of corruption from an early age. — Paul Klee

I want to be as though new-born, knowing nothing, absolutely nothing ... then I want to do something modest; to work out by myself a tiny, formal motive, one that my pencil will be able to hold without technique. — Paul Klee

I have a clear view of 12 years of history of my inner self. First the cramped self, that self with big blinkers, then the disappearance of the blinkers and the self, now gradually the reemergence of a self without blinkers. — Paul Klee

The beholder's eye, which moves like an animal grazing, follows paths prepared for it in the picture. — 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

Everything passes, and what remains of former times, what remains of life, is the spiritual. In everything we do, the claim of the Absolute is unchanging. — Paul Klee

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

It is possible that a picture will move far away from Nature and yet find its way back to reality. The faculty of memory, experience at a distance produces pictorial associations. — Paul Klee

First of all, the art of living; then as my ideal profession, poetry and philosophy, and as my real profession, plastic arts; in the last resort, for lack of income, illustrations. — Paul Klee

To emphasize only the beautiful seems to me to be like a mathematical system that only concerns itself with positive numbers. — Paul Klee

Art does not reproduce what we see; rather, it makes us see. — Paul Klee

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

Democracy with its semi-civilization sincerely cherishes junk. The artists power should be spiritual. But the power of the majority is material. When these worlds meet occasionally, it is pure coincidence. — Paul Klee

A tendency toward the abstract is inherent in linear expression: graphic imagery being confined to outlines has a fairy-like quality and at the same time can achieve great precision. — Paul Klee

The way to form transcends its own destination, goes beyond the end of the way itself. — 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

Everything vanishes round me and good works rise from me of their own accord. — Paul Klee

Color possesses me. I don't have to pursue it. It will possess me always, I know it. That is the meaning of this happy hour: Color and I are one. I am a painter. — Paul Klee

The more horrible this world (as today, for instance), the more abstract our art, whereas a happy world brings forth an art of the here and now. — 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 artist of today is more than an improved camera, he is more complex, richer, and wider. He is a creature on the earth and a creature within the whole, that is, a creature on a star among stars. — Paul Klee

Becoming is superior to being. — Paul Klee

Art does not reproduce the visible; it makes visible. — 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

My self ... is a dramatic ensemble. Here a prophetic ancestor makes his appearance. Here a brutal hero shouts. Here an alcoholic bon vivant argues with a learned professor. Here a lyric muse, chronically love-struck, raises her eyes to heaven. Her papa steps forward, uttering pedantic protests. Here the indulgent uncle intercedes. Here the aunt babbles gossip. Here the maid giggles lasciviously. And I look upon it all with amazement, the sharpened pen in my left hand. — Paul Klee

There is plenty of room left for exact experiment in art, and the gate has been opened for some time. What had been accomplished in music by the end of the eighteenth century has only begun in the fine arts. Mathematics and physics have given us a clue in the form of rules to be strictly observed or departed from, as the case may be. Here salutary discipline is come to grips first of all with the function of forms, and not with form as the final result ... in this way we learn how to look beyond the surface and get to the root of things. — Paul Klee

Sometimes I dream of a work of really great breadth, ranging through the whole region of object, meaning, and style. This, I fear, will remain a dream, but it is a good thing to bear the possibility occasionally in mind. — Paul Klee

Genius is the error in the system. — Paul Klee

Colour and I are one. — Paul Klee

The pictorial work was born of movement, is itself recorded movement, and is assimilated through movement (eye muscles). — Paul Klee

Make chance essential. — Paul Klee

Every artist would like to live in the central organ of creation ... Not all are destined to get there ... but our beating hearts drive us deep down, right into the pit of creation. — Paul Klee

I cannot be grasped in the here and now,
For my dwelling place is much among the dead,
As the yet unborn,
Slightly closer to the heart of creation than usual,
But still not close enough. — Paul Klee

The creation lives as genesis beneath the visible surface of the work. All intelligent people see this after the fact, but only the creative see it before the fact - in the future. — Paul Klee

Art does not reflect what is seen, rather it makes the hidden visible. — Paul Klee

Be winged arrows aiming at fulfillment and goal. — Paul Klee

Drawing is the art of taking a line for a walk. — Paul Klee

It is interesting to observe how real the object remains, in spite of all abstractions. — Paul Klee

Art does not reproduce what we see. It makes us see. — Paul Klee

Spatial art does not begin with a poetic mood or idea, but with construction of one or more figures, with the harmonizing of several colors and tones, or with the devaluation of spatial relationships and so on. — 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

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

It is the artistic mission to penetrate as far as may be toward that secret ground where primal law feeds growth. — Paul Klee

The painter should not paint what he sees, but what will be seen. — Paul Klee

Colour has taken hold of me; no longer do I have to chase after it. I know that it has hold of me forever. That is the significance of this blessed moment — Paul Klee

I paint in order not to cry. — Paul Klee

My hand is entirely the implement of a distant sphere. It is not my head that functions but something else, something higher, something somewhere remote. I must have great friends there, dark as well as bright. They are all very kind to me. — Paul Klee

One eye sees, the other feels. — 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

All the things an artist must be: poet, explorer of nature, philosopher! — 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

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

We construct and keep on constructing, yet intuition is still a good thing. — Paul Klee

You adapt yourself to the contents of the paintbox. — Paul Klee

Polyphonic painting is superior to music in that there, the time element becomes a spatial element. The notion of simultaneity stands out even more richly. — Paul Klee

A line is a dot that went for a walk. — Paul Klee

Satire must not be a kind of superfluous ill will, but ill will from a higher point of view. Ridiculous man, divine God. Or else, hatred against the bogged-down vileness of average man as against the possible heights that humanity might attain. — Paul Klee

Everything vanishes around me, and works are born as if out of the void. Ripe, graphic fruits fall off. My hand has become the obedient instrument of a remote will. — Paul Klee

An active line on a walk, moving freely, without goal. A walk for a walk's sake. — Paul Klee

Art should be like a holiday: something to give a man the opportunity to see things differently and to change his point of view. — Paul Klee

Color is the place where our brain and the universe meet. — Paul Klee

I still come closest to success with drawing. When I use color the results are dubious, for these painfully gained experiences bear less fruit. — Paul Klee

See with one eye, feel with the other. — Paul Klee

I must begin, not with hypothesis, but with specific instances, no matter how minute. — 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

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

Beauty is as relative as light and dark. Thus, there exists no beautiful woman, none at all, because you are never certain that a still far more beautiful woman will not appear and completely shame the supposed beauty of the first. — Paul Klee

We document, explain, justify, construct, organize: these are good things, but we do not succeed in coming to the whole ... But we may as well calm down: construction is not absolute. Our virtue is this: by cultivating the exact we have laid the foundations for a science of art, including the unknown X. — Paul Klee

I want to be as though newborn. To be almost primitive. — Paul Klee

He has found his style, when he cannot do otherwise. — Paul Klee

Nature is garrulous to the point of confusion, let the artist be truly taciturn. — 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

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

Gradually compositions make an appearance again. Political - satirical - conceits expressed in one figure or a few. — Paul Klee

A certain fire pretends to be alive; it awakens. Working its way along the hand as a conductor, it reaches the support and engulfs it; then a leaping spark closes the circle it was to trace, coming back to the eye and beyond. — Paul Klee

The creation of a work of art must of necessity, as a result of entering into the specific dimensions of pictorial art, be accompanied by distortion of the natural form. For, therein is nature reborn. — Paul Klee

It is a great difficulty and a great necessity to have to start with the smallest. — Paul Klee

To give emphasis only to beauty makes me think of a mathematics that deals with positive numbers only. — Paul Klee

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