Paul Klee (; 18 December 1879 – 29 June 1940) was a Swiss-German painter. His highly individual style was influenced by movements in art that included
Expressionism,
Cubism, and
Surrealism. Klee was a natural draftsman who experimented with and eventually deeply explored
color theory, writing about it extensively; his lectures
Writings on Form and Design Theory (
Schriften zur Form und Gestaltungslehre), published in English as the
Paul Klee Notebooks, are held to be as important for modern art as
Leonardo da Vinci's
A Treatise on Painting for the
Renaissance. He and his colleague, Russian painter
Wassily Kandinsky, both taught at the
Bauhaus school of art, design and architecture. His works reflect his dry humor and his sometimes childlike perspective, his personal moods and beliefs, and his musicality.