 Pages from Klee's notebooks discussing colour | |
| Author | Paul Klee |
|---|---|
| Original title | Schriften zur Form und Gestaltungslehre |
| Language | German |
| Subject | Klee's Bauhaus school lectures |
| Genre | Modern art |
| Published | 1956 & 1964 |
| Publisher | Benno Schwab |
| Publication place | Germany |
| Website | Zentrum Paul Klee online edition |
Paul Klee Notebooks is a two-volume work by the Swiss-born artist Paul Klee that collects his lectures at the Bauhaus schools in 1920s Germany and his other main essays on modern art. These works are considered so important for understanding modern art that they are compared to the importance that Leonardo's A Treatise on Painting had for Renaissance.[1][2][3] Herbert Read called the collection "the most complete presentation of the principles of design ever made by a modern artist – it constitutes the Principia Aesthetica of a new era of art, in which Klee occupies a position comparable to Newton's in the realm of physics."[4][5]
The final work was edited by Swiss artist Jürg Spiller and Marcel Franciscono criticized Spiller's collection of Klee's notes as "extensive but drastically rearranged", and added that the lectures "are interspersed with later notes and in part rearranged. Despite Spiller's notation of their sources in Klee's manuscripts, it is not always possible to determine from his arrangement where a lecture leaves off and an interpolation begins."[4]
In an earlier 1925 shorter book, Pädagogisches Skizzenbuch ('Pedagogical Sketchbook'), Klee published a condensation of his lectures at the Weimar Bauhaus.[4]
- ^ Disegno e progettazione By Marcello Petrignani p.17
- ^ Guilo Carlo Argan "Preface", Paul Klee, The Thinking Eye, (ed. Jürg Spiller), Lund Humphries, London, 1961, p.13.
- ^ The private Klee: Works by Paul Klee from the Bürgi Collection Archived 9 October 2009 at the Wayback Machine Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, 12 August - 20 October 2000
- ^ a b c Franciscono (1991) Part 6 'The Bauhaus and Düsseldorf', chap. 'Klee's theory courses', pp. 245-52 and under 'notes to pages 245-54' p.365
- ^ Herbert Read (1959) A concise history of modern painting, London, p.186