“Paul Klee Notebooks” Are The Bible Of Modern Art

Paul Klee's two-volume work, Paul Klee Notebooks, compiles his lectures at the Bauhaus schools in Germany in the 1920s as well as his other significant articles on modern art. What an interesting fact about Paul Klee! These writings are regarded as being as crucial to comprehending modern art like Leonardo's A Treatise on Painting was to the Renaissance. The Principia Aesthetica of a new period of art, in which Klee has a position akin to Newton's in the field of physics, is the collection, according to Herbert Read, which is "the most complete statement of the principles of design yet made by a modern artist."

There are two volumes to the notebooks. Ralph Manheim translated the first volume and Jurg Spiller edited it. The papers that made up Paul Klee's theory, production form and pictorial form, contain the same information and have a comparable significance to "painting Renaissance art," a methodology built on Leonardo's teachings.

Both notebooks are devoid of true treatises, which are collections of technical and stylistic guidelines that an artist develops via study while working and through experience. A half-turn of 188 pictures, eight of which are colorfully recreated, and a wonderful collection of more than a thousand drawings that illustrate the notes are included in the volume.

Heinz Norden translated the second volume, which contained 534 pages and was similarly edited by Jurg Spiller. The first volume is continued in the volume. Specifically, the General System of Pictorial Media, together with the nature study, consists mostly of notes and illustrations. He spoke on this during the winter of 1923–1924 at Bauhaus. This book places a strong emphasis on nature studies, which served as the inspiration for the artist's work. The total number of pictures in this volume is almost 600 and includes 234 reproductions of his works, 15 of which are in full color. There are 629 entries with writings by and about the artist.