Paul Klee created more than 9,000 works during a career that moved through Expressionism, abstraction, the Bauhaus and the political upheaval of 1930s Germany. Anyone looking through the list of Paul Klee famous paintings quickly notices the range: small watercolours, large canvases built from geometric grids, invented symbols and sharply drawn figures.

The ten works below follow that development chronologically. Each was selected for its place in Klee’s career, its presence in a major museum collection or its influence on how his art is understood today.

How the paintings were chosen

Klee worked in oil, watercolour, tempera, ink, chalk and a transfer process of his own invention. A fair selection has to show more than his colourful geometric compositions. It also needs his drawings, figures, animals, symbols and late paintings on rough fabric.

Museum recognition provided another filter. Several choices belong to institutions with major holdings, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Kunstmuseum Bern, the Zentrum Paul Klee, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Their conservation records give reliable information about materials that reproductions can easily hide.

Popularity mattered without deciding everything. Twittering Machine and Cat and Bird are familiar images, but In the Style of Kairouan reveals the scale behind Klee’s colour experiments. The late works were included because they correct the idea that his art stayed delicate or playful throughout his life.

Early breakthroughs in colour

1. Hammamet with Its Mosque, 1914

Klee travelled to Tunisia in April 1914 with the German artists August Macke and Louis Moilliet. They visited Tunis, St Germain, Hammamet and Kairouan, recording courtyards, gardens and North African architecture in watercolour.

Hammamet with Its Mosque keeps a recognisable tower and a line of buildings, but the lower part breaks the town into transparent blocks of pink, green, yellow and blue. Klee left the white paper visible between several washes, which keeps the colours separate rather than muddying them.

The trip lasted less than a month, yet it changed his method. Klee’s diary entry from Kairouan includes his often-quoted line that colour had taken possession of him. His earlier work had depended heavily on line, while the Tunisian sheets made colour the structure of the picture.

2. In the Style of Kairouan, 1914

Later in 1914, Klee turned those watercolour experiments into an unusually large composition. Its full title, In the Style of Kairouan, Transposed in a Moderate Fashion, signals that he was reworking his Tunisian observations rather than painting the city directly.

The composition measures more than two metres high. Rectangles, circles and irregular patches fill the surface, with no conventional horizon separating earth from sky. A few simplified trees and domes survive within the grid, showing how architecture supplied the starting framework for the abstraction.

The scale sets it apart from Klee’s many intimate works on paper. He was testing whether the transparent colour relationships of a small watercolour could hold together across a surface large enough to confront the viewer physically.

3. Angelus Novus, 1920

Klee made Angelus Novus with watercolour and oil-transfer drawing, a technique in which he placed inked paper beneath a clean sheet and traced over his original design. Pressure transferred an uneven black line that looks printed but keeps the hesitations of drawing.

The philosopher Walter Benjamin bought the work in 1921. In his 1940 essay On the Concept of History, Benjamin described it as the “angel of history,” driven into the future while facing the wreckage of the past. Klee didn’t assign that political meaning himself, but Benjamin’s interpretation made the small image part of twentieth-century philosophy.

The work now belongs to the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. Its fame rests on the meeting of two ideas, Klee’s invented angel and Benjamin’s response to fascism, exile and historical catastrophe.

The Bauhaus years

Walter Gropius appointed Klee to the Bauhaus in 1920, and he began teaching in Weimar in 1921. Klee prepared detailed lectures on colour, movement and pictorial construction while continuing to paint in a room at home. His teaching didn’t impose a single Bauhaus look, but it forced him to explain decisions that many artists treated as instinctive.

4. Red Balloon, 1922

A red circle floats above a tightly packed town in Red Balloon, now held by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Klee painted it in oil on muslin, whose visible weave gives the coloured surface a drier texture than a smooth primed canvas.

The town is assembled from rectangles, triangles and stepped forms. Klee kept the balloon perfectly legible by surrounding it with muted pinks, browns and greens. Its thin tether connects the circle to the buildings without fixing it to a realistic location.

The image shows how he balanced representation and abstraction. Viewers can identify a balloon and rooftops, yet the picture works as an arrangement of shapes before it works as a view of a place.

5. Twittering Machine, 1922

Four birdlike creatures sit on a wire connected to a hand crank. Their open mouths suggest singing, but the turning mechanism implies that the sound could be repetitive, forced or mechanical.

Klee produced the black contours through oil transfer, then applied watercolour in pale blues, pinks and purples. The Museum of Modern Art lists the sheet as watercolour and pen and ink over an oil-transfer drawing on paper. Those layered materials explain why the line looks rougher than an ordinary pen drawing.

The title uses the German word Zwitscher-Maschine. The combination of living birds and an operated device fits the Bauhaus period, when artists and designers were arguing about how bodies, machines and industrial production should interact.

6. Senecio, 1922

Senecio presents a face divided into coloured squares and curved sections. Two circular eyes sit at different heights, while the mouth is reduced to a short horizontal mark. The title can refer to the flowering plant genus Senecio, but it also resembles the Latin word for an old man.

Klee painted the work on gauze mounted to board rather than on a standard stretched canvas. The fabric’s texture stays visible beneath the thin colour, keeping the geometric divisions from looking mechanically flat.

The asymmetric eyes and small mouth give the head a theatrical expression without realistic modelling. Klee had studied caricature early in his career, and the exaggerated face preserves that interest beneath its geometric construction.

7. Fish Magic, 1925

Fish, plants, a clock, a cross and a small human figure appear against the dark blue-black ground of Fish Magic. Klee treated the surface like a night scene in which separate objects emerge at different depths.

The materials include oil, watercolour and ink on canvas. A square of muslin was attached near the centre, and Klee painted part of the composition over it. The edge is hard to spot in reproduction, but it creates a physical layer within the imaginary space.

Walter and Louise Arensberg acquired the painting in 1937 and later gave their collection to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Its mix of aquatic life, signs and objects shows why Klee’s pictures are difficult to file as either abstract or figurative.

8. Cat and Bird, 1928

A cat’s head fills almost the entire surface, while a small bird rests above its forehead. The cat’s eyes point toward the bird, turning the animal’s desire into the main subject rather than showing a chase or capture.

Klee used oil and ink on a gessoed canvas mounted on wood. The gesso provides a pale, absorbent ground, while thin layers of pink and rust let scratched and drawn marks stay visible.

A heart-shaped nose sits at the centre of the face. The bird’s position above the eyes makes it read as an image inside the cat’s mind rather than a bird in the room. The Museum of Modern Art acquired the painting in 1939, one year before Klee’s death.

Large scale and late intensity

Klee left the Bauhaus in 1931 to teach at the Düsseldorf Academy. The Nazis dismissed him in April 1933, police searched his home, and he returned to Bern at the end of that year. His health declined after 1935, although his output rose sharply in 1939.

9. Ad Parnassum, 1932

Ad Parnassum is among Klee’s largest paintings, measuring roughly one metre by 1.26 metres. He built its surface from hundreds of small coloured marks over a layered ground, then placed a simplified pyramid or mountain behind an orange circle.

The title refers to Parnassus, the mountain linked with Apollo and the Muses in Greek mythology. It also recalls Johann Joseph Fux’s 1725 musical treatise Gradus ad Parnassum, a manual for learning counterpoint. Klee was a trained violinist, and the repeated colour units gave him a visual equivalent for rhythm and variation.

Unlike the dots of nineteenth-century Pointillism, Klee’s marks don’t blend optically into a naturalistic scene. They build a textured field around a few large geometric signs. The Kunstmuseum Bern now holds the painting.

10. Death and Fire, 1940

Klee completed Death and Fire during the final year of his life. He had been suffering from the illness now generally identified as systemic sclerosis, which affected his skin and movement.

A pale skull-like head occupies the centre, surrounded by thick black signs and a red shape. The German word Tod, meaning death, can be read across the face and nearby forms. A T appears in the facial structure, circular eyes suggest an O, and a D-like form sits to the side.

Klee used coloured paste on jute, a coarse support that suits the heavy contours of his late period. The fragile transparent washes of 1914 have given way to dense pigment, blunt symbols and an image that addresses mortality directly. He died near Locarno on 29 June 1940.

Choosing a Klee print for your wall

Start with colour rather than fame. The pale blues and dusty pinks of the Tunisian watercolours suit rooms with light timber, linen and warm white walls. Darker works such as Fish Magic need stronger surrounding contrast and enough light to keep their smaller symbols from disappearing at a distance.

Subject sets the mood as much as palette. Architectural grids feel ordered, while birds, cats and invented plants bring in recognisable forms without becoming literal illustrations. Our Paul Klee collection includes both approaches, so you can compare the geometric compositions like Colorful Architecture with the softer watercolour pieces such as Free forms.

Format should follow the wall. Vertical works fit narrow spaces beside a bookcase or doorway, while square compositions sit comfortably above low cabinets. In practice we find Klee’s fine lines stay easier to read at A3 or A2, although a group of smaller A5 prints can echo the intimate scale of his works on paper.

Be honest about the trade-offs before framing. A black aluminium frame gives geometric pictures a firm edge, and light pine feels softer beside watercolour tones. Magnetic frames leave the print more exposed, so they aren’t the best choice for humid kitchens or spots in direct sunlight, where a glazed frame protects the paper better. Moryarty offers free framing, with unframed prints starting at €6 and framed options from €16.

Did you know?

• Klee was an accomplished violinist who played with the Bern Municipal Orchestra before committing himself fully to visual art.
• He catalogued his own work from 1911, assigning numbers and recording titles, dates, materials and owners.
• Klee made about 50 hand puppets for his son Felix between 1916 and 1925, using materials such as cloth, plaster, bone and electrical sockets.
• Seventeen of his works appeared in the Nazis’ 1937 Degenerate Art exhibition in Munich.
• His grave inscription quotes his own words about being difficult to grasp in the here and now because he lives as much with the dead as with the unborn.
• The Zentrum Paul Klee building in Bern was designed by Renzo Piano and opened in 2005.

Quick answers we hear all the time

Where can I see the largest collection of Klee’s work? The Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern holds around 4,000 works, close to 40 percent of his recorded output. Only part can be shown at once because many works on paper need controlled light exposure to slow fading.

How can I tell an original Klee from a copy? Check the support, technique, provenance and reference number in the nine-volume catalogue raisonné published by the Paul Klee Foundation. A signature alone proves little because his signatures and monograms are easy to copy.

How is Klee pronounced? The German pronunciation is close to “clay,” with one syllable. His first name is pronounced roughly “pow-l,” not the English “Paul.”

Are Klee’s images still under copyright in Europe? Klee died in 1940, so the standard European term of 70 years after the creator’s death expired at the end of 2010. Photographs taken by museums can still carry separate rights depending on the country and image.

Which Klee work should I start with if I want one print? For a bright, easy-going room, a Tunisian watercolour like Hammamet is the safest first choice because it works with almost any wood tone. If your walls are already busy, a single high-contrast piece such as Senecio reads more clearly than a dense grid seen from across the room.

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About the author

Moryarty has curated vintage poster reproductions since 2015, with a team based in Barcelona and Lisbon and reseller partners across Europe. We work closely with modernist and Bauhaus imagery, where paper tone, line weight and accurate cropping decide whether a reproduction keeps the character of the documented artwork.

Sources

• Zentrum Paul Klee. Paul Klee
• Museum of Modern Art. Paul Klee
• Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Red Balloon
• Philadelphia Museum of Art. Fish Magic
• The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Paul Klee