The Sensation of Music in Art

Paul Klee came from a family of musicians. His paternal great-grandfather was an organist, his father Hans Klee had originally intended to become a singer however, circumstances compelled him to accept a teaching position at the Cantonal School for Teachers at Hofwyl, Switzerland for fifty years. Although never entering a professional career Klee’s mother Ida Maria Frick had trained as a musician at the Stuttgart Conservatory. Indeed, for a time Klee hesitated between music and painting as a career, but as he said in the 1920s he chose painting because it seemed to be lagging behind the other arts and felt that perhaps he could advance it. One of the ways in which this lag manifested itself was in the lack of a precise terminology for visual elements. Klee seemed to have been well aware of this predicament and explains his integration of musical terminology into discussions of pictorial art.

For Klee the mother of all the arts was music. In his oeuvre, Klee ceaselessly pursued a dialogue with music in terms of both theory and visual form. He sought to understand the deepest, most fundamental rhythms, sounds, and structures of music in order to visually translate them into painted compositions. Klee’s art is permeated by music at every level, and in every phase of production.

Klee moved to Munich in 1898 to study painting and had settled there in 1906. He was on friendly terms with Kandinsky and other members of Der Blaue Reiter; his understanding of Expressionism and other modern art movements also came through his travels around Europe, and more significantly during a short voyage to Tunisia. As had been the case with Delacroix and Monet the century before, the bright light and colour of North Africa overwhelmed Kle...

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... is employed, not to liberate his thinking in a purely evocative direction but, rather, to clarify and discipline his pictorial inspirations in a manner similar to that employed by the composer of music. Klee's works are not simply "musical"; for it is not merely the end result but the entire creative process that showcases the importance of music in his life and thought.

Works Cited

Berggruen. “The Klee Universe.” Ed. Dieter Scholz and Christina Thomson. 223.

Davies, Penelope J.E. et al. “Janson’s History of Art, The Western Tradition.” vol. 2. Pearson: Prentice Hall, 2007. 960.

Geelhaar, Christian. “Paul Klee and the Bauhaus.” New York Graphic Society Ltd., 1973. 81.

Grohmann, Will. “Paul Klee.” Harry N. Abrams Inc., 1954. 26-7, 70, 162.

Verdi, Richard. “Musical Influences on the Art of Paul Klee.” Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 3 (1968): 81-84.