The Creative Abundance of Paul Klee’s Most Challenging Years
Turning adversity into power
Is there a secret to staying creative throughout your life?
Is there an approach that might foster greater productivity as the years tick upwards?
By the time he died in 1940, Paul Klee had become one of the most famous and radical artists of his generation. He had taught at the Bauhaus, an avant-garde school of design and architecture in Weimar Germany, and could count such luminaries as Wassily Kandinsky and Walter Gropius as his peers and friends.
Despite his accomplishments, Klee’s early years as an artist were a struggle. During his 20s and into his 30s he sold only a handful of works, and when he exhibited the reviews were often unfavourable due to his unconventional style.
And even when his reputation was established, Klee’s final years were fraught with adversity. Not only was his health deteriorating as a result of painful scleroderma, but the wider cultural and political climates in Switzerland (where he was born and lived for the last years of his life) and Germany (where he built his career) were becoming ever more unstable.
And yet, the last years of Klee’s life would prove to be some of the most productive and inspiring of his career, thanks to his…
