Virgin (Dreaming)

11 October 1900 – March 1901

The Academy: Franz von Stuck’s class

On 11 October 1900 Klee was admitted to the Academy of Fine Arts, to Franz von Stuck’s painting class, where Wassily Kandinsky also studied — yet the two hardly knew each other. Klee attended irregularly and left the Academy in March 1901.

22 October 1901 – 2 May 1902

First journey to Italy with Hermann Haller

With Hermann Haller, a fellow pupil at Knirr’s school and a future sculptor, Klee travelled from Milan and Genoa through Rome and Naples to Florence. Three impressions of the trip shaped his later work: the Renaissance architecture of Florence, the Naples Aquarium, which revealed the variety of natural forms, and the playful sensuality of the Gothic panels in Siena.

1902–1906

Four years at his parents’ house in Bern

Back from Italy, Klee lived for four years at his parents’ house, earning a living by giving music and painting lessons and writing reviews for a music magazine; he attended a course in anatomy for artists, and the Bern Music Society took him on as a violinist. In 1904, in Munich’s print room, he studied Aubrey Beardsley, William Blake, Goya — whose “Disasters of War” delighted him — and James Ensor.

May – June 1905

Paris with childhood friends: the Louvre and the Luxembourg

With his childhood friends, the budding painter Louis Moilliet and the writer Ernst Bloesch, Klee lived in Paris and studied classical art in the Louvre and the gallery of the Luxembourg Palace. He also became acquainted with Impressionism, but the work of Cézanne, Matisse and Derain was still unknown to him.