KLEE
not a Cliche
The artistic legacy of Paul Klee extends far beyond his whimsical paintings. This project delves into
a lesser-known aspect of his work: his poetry.
By utilizing typography as a visual language, we'll explore how the form and arrangement of letters can breathe new life into Klee's poems.
Print Design | Typographic Expressions
Introduction
Paul Klee’s poems were never published anywhere in his lifetime,
1879-1940, and were in fact only found after his death : part of them
in a blue notebook, others dispersed among the jottings in his
now-famous ‘ Diary ‘.
They are very much of a piece with his art, often humorous or cryptically ironic, sometimes mystical; formally they are well-knit, using some recurrent rhythmical patterns, often ‘sprung’ but generally simple,
as are the originals. Klee, both a poet and a painter - with a sombre, sceptical, sometimes even bitter vision of life, and intense care for achieving a truthful and effective fusion of these elements.
Klee's Poems
Historically speaking, Klee’s poetics can be linked to what might be called the poetics of contradiction. The fundamental themes are always those of non-positivity, of elusiveness, of the uncertainty of existence,
of the emptiness of reality and the need to fill that void by human endeavour and artistic creations. Nor are these born of an imperious creative will, but of the contradiction which exists between an understanding of the anguished uncertainty of everything and our indestructible awareness of existing, and of existing by necessity
in one time, in one space and in one world.
