„L'arte non deve riprodurre il visibile, ma renderlo visibile.“
Origine: Citato in Focus, n. 60, p. 185
Frasi di Paul Klee
5 1
Paul Klee
Data di nascita: 18. Dicembre 1879
Data di morte: 29. Giugno 1940
Ernst Paul Klee è stato un pittore svizzero di padre tedesco e madre svizzera, il primo musicista e la seconda cantante.
Figura eminente dell'arte del XX secolo, nel periodo della sua formazione Paul Klee si occupò di musica, poesia, pittura, scegliendo infine quest'ultima forma di espressione come ambito privilegiato e dando così inizio ad una tra le più alte e feconde esperienze artistiche del Novecento. Si mantenne comunque anche con i proventi derivati dalla sua attività di strumentista presso l'Orchestra di Berna.
Esponente dell'astrattismo, considerava l'arte un discorso sulla realtà e non una sua semplice riproduzione. Nelle sue opere la realtà è quindi rarefatta, resa essenziale, talvolta ridotta a semplici linee o campiture colorate. La sua inesausta ricerca si manifesta anche attraverso la scelta dei supporti, che vanno dalla tradizionale tela alla carta di giornale, alla juta, a cartoncini di ogni qualità e spessore.
Frasi Paul Klee
„Nessuno si riconosce in noi e noi siamo avulsi da tutti.“
Origine: Da Sull'arte moderna, Laqueur, p. 218
„In questo mondo io sono del tutto incomprensibile. Perché vivo in uguale misura con i morti e con quelli che non sono ancora nati.“
Origine: Da Diari, Laqueur, pp. 217-218
„L'occhio segue le vie che nell'opera gli sono state disposte.“
Origine: Da Pädagogisches skizzenbuch
„His [ Van Gogh's] pathos is alien to me, especially in my current phase, but he is certainly a genius. Pathetic to the point of being pathological, this endangered man can endanger one who does not see through him. Here a brain is consumed by the fire of a star. It frees itself in its work just before the catastrophe. Deepest tragedy takes place here, real tragedy, natural tragedy, exemplary tragedy. Permit me to be terrified.“
Quote (1908), # 816, in The Diaries of Paul Klee; University of California Press, 1964; as quoted by Francesco Mazzaferro, in 'The Diaries of Paul Klee - Part Three' : Klee as a Secessionist and a Neo-Impressionist Artist http://letteraturaartistica.blogspot.nl/2015/05/paul-klee-ev.html
1903 - 1910
„Nature can afford to be prodigal in everything, the artist must be frugal down to the last detail.“
Diary entry (Munich, 1909), # 857, in The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898-1918; University of California Press, 1968, p. 236
1903 - 1910
Contesto: Nature can afford to be prodigal in everything, the artist must be frugal down to the last detail.
Nature is garrulous to the point of confusion, let the artist be truly taciturn.
„The main thing now is not to paint precociously but to be, or at least become, an individual.“
Diary entry (3 June 1902), # 411, in The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898-1918; University of California Press, 1968
1895 - 1902
Contesto: The main thing now is not to paint precociously but to be, or at least become, an individual. The art of mastering life is the prerequisite for all further forms of expression, whether they are paintings, sculptures, tragedies, or musical compositions.
„Things appear to assume a broader and more diversified meaning, often seemingly contradicting the rational experience of yesterday. There is a striving to emphasize the essential character of the accidental.“
Section V
1916 - 1920, Creative Credo (1920)
Contesto: Formerly we used to represent things visible on earth, things we either liked to look at or would have liked to see. Today we reveal the reality that is behind visible things, thus expressing the belief that the visible world is merely an isolated case in relation to the universe and that there are many more other, latent realities. Things appear to assume a broader and more diversified meaning, often seemingly contradicting the rational experience of yesterday. There is a striving to emphasize the essential character of the accidental.
„My mirror probes down to the heart.“
Diary entry (Munich, 1901), # 136, in The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898-1918; University of California Press, 1968, p. 48
1895 - 1902
Contesto: 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.
„Art does not reproduce what we see. It makes us see.“
Section I
(de) Kunst gibt nicht das Sichtbare wieder, sondern macht sichtbar.
1916 - 1920, Creative Credo (1920)
Variante: Art does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible.
„The work as human action (genesis) is productive as well as receptive. It is continuity.“
I.13 Productive | Receptive, p. 33
1921 - 1930, Pedagogical Sketch Book, (1925)
„I cannot be grasped in the here and now. For I reside just as much with the dead as with the unborn. Somewhat closer to the heart of creation than usual. But not nearly close enough. The end has met the beginning.“
German original version: Diesseitig bin ich gar nicht fassbar. Denn ich wohne grad so gut bei den Toten, wie bei den Ungeborenen. Etwas näher dem Herzen der Schöpfung als üblich. Und noch lange nicht nahe genug.
Quote from Exhibition catalogue, Galerie Goltz, Munich, published in the gallery's house journal Der Ararat (May 1920). These words were later used as Klee's epitaph in 1940.
Variant translation: I cannot be understood at all on this earth. For I live as much with the dead as with the unborn. Somewhat closer to the heart of creation than usual. But not nearly close enough.
As quoted in Paul Klee: His Work and Thought (1991) by Marcel Franciscono, p. 5
1916 - 1920
„The work grows "stone upon stone" (additive) or
The block is hewn "chip from chip" (subtractive)
Both processes, building and reducing, are time bound.“
I.13 Productive | Receptive, p. 33
1921 - 1930, Pedagogical Sketch Book, (1925)
„These are primitive beginnings in art, such as one usually finds in ethnographic collections or at home in one's nursery. Do not laugh, reader! Children also have artistic ability, and there is wisdom in their having it! The more helpless they are, the more instructive are the examples they furnish us; and they must be preserved from corruption at an early age. Parallel phenomena are provided by the works of the mentally diseased; neither childish behaviour nor madness are insulting words here, as they commonly are. All this is to be taken very seriously, more seriously than all the public galleries, when it comes to reforming today's art.“
Diary entry (January 1912), # 905, quoting his "Munich Art Letter" in the journal Die Alpen
1911 - 1914
„The contrast between man's ideological capacity to move at random through material and metaphysical spaces and his physical limitations, is Uneven lengths and uneven angle-degrees of the point-rudder result in a deviating course. the origin of all human tragedy. It is this contrast between power and prostration that implies the duality of human existence. Half winged-half imprisoned, this is man!“
IIII.37, The Arrow. p. 54
1921 - 1930, Pedagogical Sketch Book, (1925)
„Formerly it frequently happened to me that when questioned regarding a picture I simply did not know what it represented. I had not seen the subject, so to say. Now I have also included the content so that I know most of the time what is represented. But this only supports my experience that what matters in the ultimate end is the abstract meaning of harmonization“
note from a letter, 1903
Quote from a letter (1903), as cited in Artists on Art, from the 14th – 20th centuries, ed. Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves; Pantheon Books, 1972, London, p. 443
1903 - 1910
