Paul KleeGerman, 1879–1940Ex libris L. Michaud
May one see it?
Not receiving at present
Chicago, United States
It belongs to the collection, but is not on display at present.
- Checked
- In this state since
- Source
- The museum
Particulars
- Accession number
- 1970.233
In the catalog
Sources
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Image: Art Institute of Chicago — © the artist or rights holder
Meanwhile, in the life of Paul Klee
The whole lifeDecember 1899
Meeting Lily Stumpf
At a musical evening Klee meets the pianist Lily (Karoline) Stumpf, the daughter of an army doctor. She will become his wife in 1906.
1899–1900
Knirr’s private school after the Academy turned him down
The Academy did not accept him — its director advised him to take lessons in drawing the human body first — so Klee began at Heinrich Knirr’s private school, where from 1899 he studied etching with Walter Ziegler. His fellow students included Zinaida Vasilyeva, who with her husband Alexander Eliasberg later joined the artist’s close circle; in February 1900 Klee moved into a studio of his own and enjoyed a free student life.
1900
An illegitimate son who dies in infancy
In 1900, in the years of his free student life, an illegitimate son was born to Klee; the boy died several weeks after his birth.
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.
