Google doodle celebrates Paul Klee's 139th Birthday

Paul Klee was a Swiss-German artist. His highly individual style was influenced by movements in art that included Expressionism, Cubism, and Surrealism.

Paul Klee was a natural draftsman who experimented with and eventually deeply explored colour theory. Today’s Doodle pays homage to his Rote Brücke (Red Bridge), a 1928 work that transforms the rooftops and arches of a European city into a pattern of shapes rendered in contrasting yet harmonious hues. As Klee wrote in his diary, in 1914: “Color and I are one… I am a painter.”

Paul Klee was born in Münchenbuchsee, Switzerland. In his early years, following his parents’ wishes, Klee focused on becoming a musician; but he decided on the visual arts during his teen years, partly out of rebellion and partly because of a belief that modern music lacked meaning for him. On his own time, in addition to his deep interests in music and art, Klee was a great reader of literature, and later a writer on art theory and aesthetics.

Paul Klee married Bavarian pianist Lily Stumpf in 1906 and they had one son named Felix Paul in the following year. They lived in a suburb of Munich, and while she gave piano lessons and occasional performances, he kept house and tended to his artwork. He studied dots, lines, planes, and forms observed from nature—whether from the fish tank he kept at home or the veins are seen on leaves or the human body—applying his observations to a vast body of work.

Klee suffered from a wasting disease, scleroderma, toward the end of his life, enduring pain that seems to be reflected in his last works of art.

Happy Birthday, Paul Klee!