Editing Paul Klee (section)

===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>