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lly wound up settling in Switzerland, where he lived for the remainder of his life.

The defining characteristic of Klee's paintings was his use of symbols. Instead of painting landscapes or people using traditional methods, Klee tried to reduce things to recognizable symbols that both distilled and expanded upon their true essence. He was fascinated with children and the art that they produced, and he was particularly inspired by their habit of reducing the world to signs and symbols. Klee's use of symbols to describe the real world became attractive to the Surrealists, and his work became quite important to the evolution of that movement.

Paul Klee: A Peek at his Early Life and Training
Paul Klee, considered by many as a painter of German and Swiss decent, was born on Decemeber 18, 1879 in Münchenbuchsee, Switzerland. In his early life, he was draftsman by nature who actually did experiments on color theory which, in the end, he was able to master. The unique style of Klee was greatly inspired by art movements which include expressionism, surrealism as well as cubism. He also did extensive writings about the color theory. Klee’s lectures which were published in English (Writings on Form and Design Theory) are known to be very significant for the modern art to that point that they were compared to the significance to the Renaiisance period of A Treatise on Painting, a work by none other than Leonardo Da Vinci. Most of Klee’s works are reflections of his dry humor and his perspective which at times we childish, his beliefs and moods, not to mention his musicality.

In the year 1886 up until 1890, Klee’s history of training started whn he attended primary school and by the early age of 7, received violin classes at the Municipal Music School. Klee was extremely talented in playing the instrument that at the age of 11, he already had his first invite to be a member of the Bern Music Association.

During his early years, Klee concentrated on trying his luck in music, as what his parents wished for him. However, in his teen years, Klee opted to focus on visual arts. This action was partially a form of rebellion and partially motivated by his belief that music of their time had no meaning for him. When he was a musician, he was feeling emotionally compelled to traditional pieces of the eighteenth century, but when he’s an artist, Klee longed for the liberty to discover radical thoughts and styles. By the age of sixteen, his drawings in landscape demonstrated substantial skills already.

Despite his parent’s unwilling permission, Klee started studying art in the year 1898 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. He spent his studies along with Heinrich Knirr and Franz von Stuck. Klee actually did extremely well at drawing but appeared to be short of natural color sense. He then thought that he’s never going to learn painting. In these youthful years of Klee, he went in and out of pubs and had relationships with women from the lower class and with models of some artists, even. In 1990, Klee had an illegitimate son, who did not survive after several weeks from birth.

By the time he received his degree in Fine Arts, Klee set off to Italy by October 1901 to May 1902. He lived in Rome, Florence, and Naple with his friend, Herman Haller. Klee also examined the great painters of the past centuries. He then went back to Bern and stayed with his parents for quite a few years. While there, Klee studied and took intermittent art classes. When 1905 came, he was already cultivating experimental styles, which include drawing with the use of a needle that ended in fifty-seven paintings, such as Portrait of My Father.