Editing Paul Klee (section)

==Marriage and early years==

===Marriage===
[[File:Paul Klee Flower Myth 1918.jpg|thumb|upright|''Flower Myth'' (''Blumenmythos'') 1918, watercolor on pastel foundation on fabric and newsprint mounted on board, [[Sprengel Museum]], Hannover, Germany]]

Klee married Bavarian pianist [[Lily Klee|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 art work. His attempt to be a magazine illustrator failed.<ref name="Partsch, p. 12"/> Klee's art work progressed slowly for the next five years, partly from having to divide his time with domestic matters, and partly as he tried to find a new approach to his art.  In 1910, he had his first solo exhibition in Bern, which then travelled to three Swiss cities.

=== Affiliation to the "Blaue Reiter", 1911 ===
In January 1911, [[Alfred Kubin]] met Klee in Munich and encouraged him to illustrate [[Voltaire]]'s ''[[Candide]]''. His resultant drawings were published later in a 1920 version of the book edited by Kurt Wolff. Around this time, Klee's graphic work increased. His early inclination towards the absurd and the sarcastic was well received by Kubin, who befriended Klee and became one of his first significant collectors.<ref name="Baumgartner207">Beate Ofczarek, Stefan Frey: ''Chronologie einer Freundschaft''. Michael Baumgartner, Cathrin Klingsöhr-Leroy, Katja Schneider, p. 207</ref> Klee met, through Kubin, the art critic Wilhelm Hausenstein in 1911. Klee was a foundation member and manager of the Munich artists' union ''Sema'' that summer.<ref name="Verspohl90">Thomas Kain, Mona Meister, Franz-Joachim Verspohl, Jena 1999, p. 90</ref> In autumn he made an acquaintance with [[August Macke]] and [[Wassily Kandinsky]], and in winter he joined the editorial team of the almanac ''[[Der Blaue Reiter]]'', founded by [[Franz Marc]] and Kandinsky. On meeting Kandinsky, Klee recorded, "I came to feel a deep trust in him.  He is somebody, and has an exceptionally beautiful and lucid mind."<ref>Jardi, p. 12</ref> Other members included Macke, [[Gabriele Münter]] and [[Marianne von Werefkin]]. Klee became in a few months one of the most important and independent members of the ''Blaue Reiter'', but he was not yet fully integrated.<ref>Göttler: ''Der Blaue Reiter'', p. 118</ref>

The release of the almanac was delayed for the benefit of an exhibition. The first ''Blaue Reiter'' exhibition took place from 18 December 1911 to 1 January 1912 in the Moderne Galerie Heinrich Thannhauser in Munich. Klee did not attend it, but in the second exhibition, which occurred from 12 February to 18 March 1912 in the [[Hans Goltz|Galerie Goltz]], 17 of his graphic works were shown. The name of this art exhibition was ''Schwarz-Weiß'', as it only regarded graphic painting.<ref>Dietmar Elger, ''Expressionismus''. 1988, p. 141, {{ISBN|3-8228-0093-7}}</ref> Initially planned to be released in 1911, the release date of the ''Der Blau Reiter'' almanac by Kandinsky and Marc was delayed in May 1912, including the reproduced ink drawing ''Steinhauer'' by Klee. At the same time, Kandinsky published his art history writing ''Über das Geistige in der Kunst''.<ref>Catalogue raisonné, volume 1, 1998, p. 512; Thomas Kain, Mona Meister, Franz-Joachim Verspohl; ''Paul Klee in Jena 1924. Der Vortrag. Minerva''. Writings from Jena to Art History, volume 10, art history seminar, Jenoptik AG, print house Gera, Jena 1999, p. 92</ref>

===Participation in art exhibitions, 1912–1913===
The association opened Klee's mind to modern theories of color. His travels to Paris in 1912 also exposed him to the ferment of [[Cubism]] and the pioneering examples of "pure painting", an early term for [[abstract art]]. The use of bold color by [[Robert Delaunay]] and [[Maurice de Vlaminck]] also inspired him.<ref>Partsch, p. 18</ref> Rather than copy these artists, Klee began working out his own color experiments in pale watercolors and did some primitive landscapes, including ''In the Quarry'' (1913) and ''Houses near the Gravel Pit'' (1913), using blocks of color with limited overlap.<ref>Jardi, plate 7, 9</ref> Klee acknowledged that "a long struggle lies in store for me in this field of color" in order to reach his "distant noble aim."  Soon, he discovered "the style which connects drawing and the realm of color."<ref name="Kagan, p. 23"/>

===Trip to Tunis, 1914===
Klee's artistic breakthrough came in 1914 when he briefly visited Tunisia with [[August Macke]] and [[Louis Moilliet]] and was impressed by the quality of the light there.  He wrote, "Color has taken possession of me; no longer do I have to chase after it, I know that it has hold of me forever... Color and I are one. I am a painter."<ref name="Partsch, p. 20">Partsch, p. 20</ref> With that realization, faithfulness to nature faded in importance. Instead, Klee began to delve into the "cool romanticism of abstraction".<ref name="Partsch, p. 20"/> In gaining a second artistic vocabulary, Klee added color to his abilities in draftsmanship, and in many works combined them successfully, as he did in one series he called "operatic paintings".<ref>Partsch, pp. 24–25</ref><ref>Kagan, p. 33</ref> One of the most literal examples of this new synthesis is ''The Bavarian Don Giovanni'' (1919).<ref>Kagan, p. 35</ref>

After returning home, Klee painted his first pure abstract, ''In the Style of Kairouan'' (1914), composed of colored rectangles and a few circles.<ref>Partsch, p. 27</ref> The colored rectangle became his basic building block, what some scholars associate with a musical note, which Klee combined with other colored blocks to create a color harmony analogous to a musical composition. His selection of a particular color palette emulates a musical key. Sometimes he uses complementary pairs of colors, and other times "dissonant" colors, again reflecting his connection with musicality.<ref>Kagan, pp. 27, 29.</ref>

===Military career===
[[File:Paul Klee, 1916.jpg|right|upright|thumb|Paul Klee as a soldier, 1916]]
A few weeks later, [[World War I]] began. At first, Klee was somewhat detached from it, as he wrote ironically, "I have long had this war in me. That is why, inwardly, it is none of my concern."<ref>Partsch, p. 31</ref> Klee was [[conscription|conscripted]] as a ''Landsturmsoldat'' (soldier of the reserve forces in [[Prussia]] or Imperial Germany) on 5 March 1916. The deaths of his friends [[August Macke]] and [[Franz Marc]] in battle began to affect him. Venting his distress, he created several pen and ink [[lithograph]]s on war themes including ''Death for the Idea'' (1915).<ref>Reproduced alongside Gerg Traki's poem in Zeit-Echo 1915.A reverse [[ekphrasis]].</ref> After finishing the military training course, which began on 11 March 1916, he was committed as a soldier behind the front. Klee moved on 20 August to the aircraft maintenance company{{Ref label|fn_2|b|b}} in [[Oberschleissheim]], executing skilled manual work, such as restoring aircraft [[camouflage]], and accompanying aircraft transports. On 17 January 1917, he was transferred to the Royal Bavarian flying school in [[Gersthofen]] (which 54 years later became the [[USASA Field Station Augsburg]]) to work as a clerk for the treasurer until the end of the war. This allowed him to stay in a small room outside of the barrack block and continue painting.<ref name="Baumgartner214f">Beate Ofczarek, Stefan Frey: ''Chronologie einer Freundschaft'', pp.&nbsp;214&nbsp;et seqq</ref><ref>Partsch, p. 35</ref>

He continued to paint during the entire war and managed to exhibit in several shows. By 1917, Klee's work was selling well and art critics acclaimed him as the best of the new German artists.<ref>Partsch, p. 36</ref> His ''[[Ab ovo (painting)|Ab ovo]]'' (1917) is particularly noteworthy for its sophisticated technique. It employs watercolor on gauze and paper with a chalk ground, which produces a rich texture of triangular, circular, and crescent patterns.<ref name="Partsch, p. 20"/> Demonstrating his range of exploration, mixing color and line, his ''Warning of the Ships'' (1918) is a colored drawing filled with symbolic images on a field of suppressed color.<ref>Partsch, p. 40</ref>