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Paul Klee. Principles on the Nature of Colour. Theory and Practice

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Paul Klee. Principles on the Nature
of Colour. Theory and Practice

José de Coca Leicher

Abstract Between 1921 and 1923, while teaching at the Bauhaus in Weimar, Paul
Klee taught three periods of lectures and exercises titled Beiträge zur bildnerischen
Formlehre [Contributions to a pictorial theory]. We study the final part of the
notebook (winter semester 1922–1923) dedicated to the theory and practice of
color, preserved at the Paul Klee Center in Bern. Nucleus of his teaching which
runs until 1931, beside with other aspects contained in his diaries and letters, the
trip to Tunisia and the influence of artists and theorists such as Delaunay,
Kandinsky or Goethe.

Keywords Paul Klee
Color
Theory

In the context of the prolific teachings at the Bauhaus, the colour theories of
Johanes Itten, Wasilly Kandinsky, Paul Klee and Joseph Albers are known to a
greater or lesser extent. All of these theories are based to a more or less extend on
the purpose of establishing a general theory starting from the experiments by Isaac
Newton, the essential contribution of Johan Wolfgang Goethe and of other scien-
tists and previous and contemporary artists.
The teachings of Paul Klee about form and colour began in Weimar in 1921 and
continued until 1931 in Dessau and they had an important influence on his students.
In his search for connections between nature and art, a vision of the artist as a tree
emerges, where the roots are nourishing by reality which at the same time is feeding
the treetop. A symbol of a new artist, looking at time and at the multidimensional
space, which once again is a mirror of the root.

J. de Coca Leicher (&)

Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura,
Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Madrid, Spain
e-mail: jose.decoca@upm.es
J. de Coca Leicher
Escuela de Arquitectura de Alcalá, Universidad de Alcalá, Madrid, Spain

© Springer International Publishing AG 2018 851

E. Castaño Perea and E. Echeverría Valiente (eds.), Architectural Draughtsmanship,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58856-8_67

jose.decoca@upm.es
852 J. de Coca Leicher

Fig. 1 Sketch: I-You-Earth. [Ways of Nature Study], 1923, BG A/30. Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern

The attractive example demonstrates the poetic essence of his thinking and the
attempt to distinguish between nature and art as one of the fundamental problems of
our time (Klee 1945, 13–16). In his lecture on modern art given in Jena in 1924 and
published in 1945 under the title “Über moderne Kunst”, he sets the three
dimensions or orders of painting: the line associated to the measure, the tonality to
the weight and the colours to the highest dimension, the quality. For Klee the three
variables are intersecting in colour: first quality, second measure and third weight.
Klee asks himself: What is the order of the nature of colour? (Klee 1945, 19)
(Fig. 1).
The studied material is taken from the cycles of classes taught in the preliminary
course between 1921 and 1923, titled Beiträge zur bildnerischen Formlehre
(BF) [Contributions to a Theory of Pictorial Form],1 in particular lesson 10, in the
final part of the notebook, in which the principles of “Farbenlehre” are set [Colour
Theory]. The study is expanded with material of the compendium made in 1928 and
titled Bildnerische Gestaltungslehre (BG) [Theory of Creative Design] with some

1
Handwritten notebook with 192 pages including the 3 cycles of lectures given between the 14th
of November 1921 and the 19th of December 1922. The dates on which lectures are taught are
indicated and there are annotations showing that the material was reused for cycles of lectures later
compiled in Prinzipiele Ordnung.

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Paul Klee. Principles on the Nature of Colour … 853

Fig. 2 Red and white domes, 1914, 45, Tunisia. Paul Klee. Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen

illustrations of the notebook 2 Principiele Ordnung (BG 1.2) [Main Order]2 and
materials of Anhang (A) [Annex] containing the final schemes of the lessons and
some works of students.
The working principles of the mechanisms of creation that Klee had reached are
exposed in Beitrage zur bildnerischen Formlehre. These principles had been
announced in the previously written Schopferische Konfesion (SK) [Creative
Credo] (Klee 1920) that were a part of the texts compiled by Kasimir Edschmidt3
of: “… a vision of the strongest artistic profiles that constitute our time, about
themselves: the work, the time and the world.” (Fig. 2).
Also in the pages of his famous Diaries (T) (Klee 1987), written between 1898
and 1918, the reflections and the improvements from the drawing towards the

2
Contains the manuscripts of the lessons taught initially in the winter semester of 1923/24, with an
index with the references to the pages of BF, reused from the previous semesters (see: http://www.
kleegestaltungslehre.zpk.org/html/chapterInfo/BGI_2.pdf).
3
Max Pechstein, Max Beckmann, Arnold Schoenberg and Franz Marc, would be among the best
known in the sphere of Paul Klee.

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854 J. de Coca Leicher

artistic use of colour are described with fundamental episodes like his visit to
Robert Delaunay in Paris (in 1912) and the later translation of his text: “La lumiere”
for the magazine Sturm (Klee 1987, [910, 913]). The performance of the Russian
Ballet with Vaslav Nijinsky in Munich in 1912: “He dances both in the air and on
the ground” linking this remark with the emergence of the new ideas of the Futurists
and their Manifesto: “when a window is opened, all the street noise suddenly
penetrates in the room, also the movement and essence of things outside” (Klee
1987, [916]). The relationship with Wassily Kadinsky “the boldest of them whom
also tries to work through the word” (The Spiritual in Art, published by Piper) (Klee
1987, [905]) and the painters of Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) Franz Marc and
August Macke, with the essential trip to Tunisia, in April 1914 accompanying the
latter and the painter Louis Moilliet, where he wrote:
I now stop working. I feel deeply being a part of the environment, I feel it and it gives me
confidence in myself without effort. Colour possesses me. I don’t have to pursue it. It will
possess me always, I know it. That is the meaning of this happy hour: Colour and me, we
are one. I am a painter. (Klee 1987, [926o]).

The watercolours series, performed before and after the trip, of vivid and steamy
colours extending on a more or less perceptible grid from which emanate domed,
organic or plant shapes, are the result of the assimilation of many influences in his
evolved abstract thinking: the theory of simultaneous contrasts, the windows and
cathedrals by Delaunay, the moving shapes and colours by Carlo Carra, Umberto
Boccioni and Gino Severini, without forgetting Jacopo Tintoretto, Eugene
Delacroix or Ferdinand Hodler, while he sets at the same time the aim of the artist
as a creator, the autonomy of expression against the impression, as indicated in the
Creative Credo:
Art does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible. A tendency toward the abstract
is inherent in linear expression: graphic imagery being confined to outlines has a fairy-like
quality and at the same time can achieve great precision. The purer the graphic work, that
is, the more the formal elements underlying linear expression are emphasized, less adequate
it is for a realistic representation of the visible things. (Klee 1920 [1981], 6).

Experiments with smoked glass accomplished around 1918, previous teaching at

the Glass Painting Workshop of the Bauhaus, always accompanied by a deep
knowledge of music, as a melomaniac and soloist of violin. On this basis, we will
try to describe some key aspects of the colour theory preserved as lectures and
exercises in the notebooks at the Paul Klee Zentrum.
The basis of the theory is specified in the nine previous lessons, which have been
recompiled in 1924 and published in Munich in 1925 by Albert Langen as the
Bauhausbücher number 2, entitled “Pädagogisches Skitzenbuch” [Pedagogical
Sketchbook] with some of the graphic materials from the lessons—reduced to ink
drawings and texts—sometimes hardly understandable due to their schematic and
brief nature (Klee 1925, Klee 1953).
The first lesson of the notebook Contributions to a Pictorial Theory, given in
November 1921, is dedicated to the line as a plastic medium. Considering a line as a
moving point it can be shifted in a freely and “active” way. By creating closed

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Paul Klee. Principles on the Nature of Colour … 855

shapes like a triangle or a circle it acquires a “medial” character and becomes

completely “passive” when filled with colour. The suggestive drawing of a hori-
zontal eight, forming a continuous loop crossed by 3 vertical fields: the active,
medial and passive layer that synthesizes these ideas, will not appear until the
lesson on May 1922 and will also be published on page 11 of Pedagogical
Sketchbook. This sketched-symbol expresses the ideas that so much obsessed Klee
—genesis, change and transformation—and it is an important step in the achieve-
ment of a spatial and multidimensional order of colour (Fig. 3) (Klee 1925, 11).
In the second lesson, from the 28th of November, the line jumps from the surface
into space setting the foundations of perspective representation. In the lessons from
the 5th and 12th of December, he tries to check how the colour equilibrium works
using the example of the balance that after Christmas was developed by incorpo-
rating ancient capital letters. In the class from the 16th of January, he enters into the
field of rhythm and geometric structuring of the picture surface (Fig. 4).
The repetition of a certain rhythm that cannot be divided, the “individual”, is
associated with the figure, for example a fish, and the “dividual” or abstract is
subdivided into parts that grow as a grid or ornament in all spatial directions. These
possibilities are exemplified in music, with the intonation of the beat of a melody.
Mid-February, the notions of active and passive were applied in anatomy which are
explained by means of the nerve impulses sent from the brain (active), translated
into movements through muscles (active) and bones (passive). Parting from those
principles he proposes an exercise based on the construction of a three-part
mechanism, showing possible solutions with the examples of the waterwheel, the
plant and the bloodstream. Klee says that movement is the origin of creation,
reproduced from the genesis of the work, indicated by the symbol of the arrow or
by an equilibrium, the gradation or the contrast of the colours in the composition,

Fig. 3 Repetition of active, medial and passive. BF/149. Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern

jose.decoca@upm.es
856 J. de Coca Leicher

Fig. 4 Perspective. Elements balanced in space. BF/26. Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern

Fig. 5 The viewer’s eye movement. BF/100. Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern

which are finally perceived through active movement of the eye around the surface
of a painting (Fig. 5).
During the summer semester of 1922, Klee concentrates the previous contents
into 6 classes (15 May, 22 May, 12 June, 19 June, 26 June and 3 July) providing a
summary in the last class of the 3rd of July. In the following winter semester, the
contents relate only to colour. There are two lessons, 29th and 19th of December,
and two exercises (the 5th and the 12th of December), all in 1922. Based on the
chromatic circle and triangle, he sets out the fundamental principles of the colour

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Paul Klee. Principles on the Nature of Colour … 857

theory, inspired on some precedent theories which are mentioned at the beginning
of the class on the 22nd of November:
I want to try to tell you something useful about the colours. I rely not only on my own
ideas, but in order to transmit these utilities I incorporate without objections the reflections
of others. To clarifying I mention a few names: Goethe, Philip Otto Runge, whose colour
sphere was published in 1810, Delacroix and Kandisnky (The Spiritual in Art). (Klee 1922,
BF/156).

The aim is to set an ideal colour box in which a fully justified order is reached.
For Klee, colour is obtained from nature, from plants and animal world, mineral-
ogy, the landscape, highlighting the rainbow as a phenomenon that acts as the
abstraction of all coloured things. 7 colours are derived from it: red-purple/red/
orange/yellow/green/blue/blue-violet, which also fit well with the 7 notes of the
musical scale. But Klee thinks that the linear nature is insufficient because red-violet
and blue-violet are “incomplete”, considering, on the one hand, the division of the
colour wheel in the green/orange/purple colours facing the red/yellow/blue and, on
the other, the pendulum movement that becomes circular by joining at the ends of
the two incomplete colours. The way of reaching the famous colour wheel is new,
also is new its dynamic and gravitational conceptualisation, distinguishing two
types of movement: the diametrical and the peripheral. There are 3 diameters facing
the pairs blue/orange; violet/yellow; red/green, indicating the classic complemen-
tary relationship and also the gradual transition (expressed as another pendular
movement) from the pure colour end towards the centre or equilibrium position
represented by the “neutral grey”. These colours are called “authentic”. There exist
infinite colours diametrically facing each other as we move around the perimeter.
Pairs of “not authentic” colours come together by secants (the characteristic colours
by Goethe), resulting a mixture of “not neutral grey”, for example, by mixing green
and orange we obtain a green loaded with yellow (Fig. 6).
As for the peripheral movement, Klee wonders in the lesson from the 19th of
December about the scope of the three primary colours: red/yellow/blue, noting that
each of them occupies two thirds of the circle partially overlapping and leaving the
other third free. This is shown with the red. In the centre of the arc is the “cul-
mination of red” and towards the end there are two other points: the “warm end of
red” that matches the “culmination of yellow” and the “cool end of red” that
matches the “culmination of blue”. In this way, Klee manages to express the tonal
transition from one fundamental colour to the other two, from the “nothing” in the
“highlight” of the adjacent colour until its maximum intensity and tonal strength at
the ends of the other two. The musical analogy leads him to express the concepts of
“chain” and “canon of totality”:
Then, there is something else: the colours on the circle do not sound at the same time as it
might seem according to this chain, but in a sort of trio of voices. This representation allows
us to recognize the movement well and follow easily its evolution. The voices consecu-
tively enter in the form of canon. In each of the high points culminates a voice another
enters softly and the third disappears. (Klee 1922, BF/179).

jose.decoca@upm.es
858 J. de Coca Leicher

Fig. 6 Chromatic wheel and violet-purple pendular movement. BF/160. Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern

At the end of the notebook, Klee explores the representation by the colour
triangle obtained from the circle. It is an equilateral triangle in whose apexes pure
colours are represented: red/yellow/blue with its quality of maximum purity in the
“culminating point”. The sides are occupied by secondary or dependent colours:
green/orange/purple. The possibilities of relationship obtained from different
movements in the triangle, as analysed in the following pages, do not satisfy Klee.

jose.decoca@upm.es
Paul Klee. Principles on the Nature of Colour … 859

Despite obtaining the grey, either as the centre of gravity of the triangle or the circle
centre, the relationships of the light and dark are not explained by the incorporation
of black and white. On the last page of the notebook, a three-dimensional model is
obtained from the colour triangle and the two apexes in the vertical of the grey, the
upper corresponding to the white colour and the lower to black, forming the “totalis
pentaeder”, a first step towards the spatial topography of colour (Fig. 7).

Fig. 7 Canon of totality of the main colours. BF/179. Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern

jose.decoca@upm.es
860 J. de Coca Leicher

Fig. 8 Canon of totality in three dimensions. Cosmology colours. BG 1.2/156 Zentrum Paul Klee,
Bern

With these few examples I have concluded the elementary topography of colour. The next
time I will return again on it in order to extend the topography into space. In between,
maybe we rehearse again (Klee 1922, BF/193).

At the beginning of 1924, Klee treats the plastic means in detail. Even though the
line is commented briefly, the explanations are focusing on chiaroscuro and colour,
using the previous notes as a basis for the principles of the theory, as he had explained
in the winter semester 1922. In the lesson on the 12th of February he will say:

jose.decoca@upm.es
Paul Klee. Principles on the Nature of Colour … 861

To get the colour totality with the main points: white, red, yellow and black, we are forced
to depend on a spatial order, we find ourselves obliged to stretch fully our colour box to the
three dimensions and, obviously, get a sphere (Klee 1928, BG 1.2/125).

The colour dimensions are treated by means of the sphere of Philip Otto Runge.
The direction from top to bottom corresponds to the illumination, of left to right to
the temperature. He will also establish the variations of each tone with the mixture
with black and white, and which geometric shape is equivalent to each colour. Klee
dedicated much attention to the behaviour of the pairs of colours, whose ultimate
objective was its usage for getting balance and compensation in space (Fig. 8).
The organized and systematic use of colour comes from the palette which is
organized according to the three diameters of pairs: blue/orange (horizontal),
green/red (diagonal left) and yellow/violet (diagonal right). Each colour tonality
will move in concentric circles from the outside to the centre: white polar circle,
spectral circle, black polar circle, grey circle. In the centre of the palette, in three of
the six sectors there are located white (left), black (centre) and grey (left), forming
the pole which is ultimately a projection of the vertical diameter of the sphere.
Everything is described in a splendid scheme that appears at the end of the
Prinzipiele Ordnung notebook (Klee 1928, BG 1.2/161) and manages to express
the spatial order as a cosmology of colours that orbit the grey circle (Fig. 9).
As conclusion, Klee keeps some student exercises in the annex. In the descrip-
tions of the lessons, which also work as a diary, he always proposes some exercises,
usually to be done within one week, and with annotations of comments on the
results, often considered as unsatisfactory. This sometimes leads him to redirect or
expand the lessons starting from the difficulties of students, despite being his theory a
very reserved and difficult to apply for someone different than himself. Pedagogical

Fig. 9 Logical placement of colours in the palette. BG 1.2/161 Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern

jose.decoca@upm.es
862 J. de Coca Leicher

risks are evident, the linking of students to the idea of harmony and totality based on
the proposed instruments, which perhaps are too immediate translations of the
teacher’s experiences, may lead to an inability to explore own paths and ideas.
This can be seen in the exercises and later works of students that did not escape from
the teacher’s influence; Klee never showed a rigid attitude and favoured personal
exploration, trying to prevent his pupils from the strict use of the formulated laws
(Wick 1988, 230). At the conclusion of the lesson given the 19th of December 1922
about colour topography, he will say:
These ideas themselves lead to the construction. They hit the heads of asthmatic people
with narrow chest, who produce laws rather than works. Those have a little mind to
understand that laws are only a basis to flourish on them. Laws are only used to see how
works are different from the surrounding nature, the earth, the animals and the people,
without necessarily being absurd. Laws are only a common basis for nature and art. (Klee
1922, BF/188)

As he insisted, his pedagogy avoid any dogma. He wanted to provide his students
the aspects and basic tools of colour and shape such that they could freely advance

Fig. 10 Standing, slide,

walking, jumping. Exercise:
types of movement,
chiaroscuro. Student:
Brodendink, BG A/497.
Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern

jose.decoca@upm.es
 Paul Klee. Principles on the Nature of Colour … 863

by themselves. This is an absolutely valid objective in any pedagogy that should

enhance the autonomy and personal development, especially in the use of colour as a
vehicle of personal expression and creation, also in the field of architecture (Fig. 10).

References

Christoph von Tavel, Hans, et al. 1987. Paul Klee: Leben und Werk/Paul Klee. Paul-Klee-Stiftung,
Kunstmuseum Bern und dem Museum of Modern Art, New York. Berna.
Klee, Paul. 1920. “XIII Schopferische Konfession” (XIII Confesión creadora). In Tribüne der
Kunst und Zeit, 28–40, ed. by Kasimir Edschmid. Berlín: Erich Reiss Verlag AG.
Klee, Paul. 1921–1922. Bildnerische Formlehre. Zentrum Paul Klee, Berna. Recurso electónico:
http://www.kleegestaltungslehre.zpk.org/ee/ZPK/BF/2012/01/01/001/.
Klee, Paul. 1925. Pädagosgisches Skizzenbuch. Bauhausbücher 2. München: Albert Langen.
Klee, Paul. 1928. Bildnerrische Gestaltungslehre. Berna: Zentrum Paul Klee. Recurso electrónico:
http://www.kleegestaltungslehre.zpk.org/ee/ZPK/Archiv/2011/01/25/00006/.
Klee, Paul. 1945. Über die Moderne Kunst. Beteli. Bern-Bümpilz. Recurso electrónico: https://
portal.dnb.de/bookviewer/view/1032296127#page/16/mode/2up.
Klee, Paul. 1953. Pedagogical Sketchbook. New York: Federick A. Praeger. (Int. and transl. Sibyl
Moholy-Nagy).
Klee, Paul. 1981. Confesión Creadora. In Klee Oleos, acuarelas, dibujos y grabados. Marzo-Mayo,
1981. Fundación Juan March. Madrid.
Klee, Paul. 1987. Paul Klee Diarios, ed. by Jas Reuter. Madrid: Alianza Editorial.
Wick, Rainer. 1988. Pedagogía de la Bauhaus. Madrid: Alianza Editorial.

Author Biography

José de Coca Leicher Madrid 1965, architect ETSAM 1993, Ph.D. in 2013 at UPM. Special
Mention 2014. Associate Professor in Architectural Projects ETSA-UAH (-2006) and Drawing
ETSAM-UPM (-1998). Research Groups: Drawing of Architecture and City, UPM, and
Architectural Projects and Intervention in Equity and Sustainable Architecture, UAH. Advisory
committee journal, Proyecto, Progreso, Arquitectura. Editor of Special Plans: Renewal of the
ensemble of the Manzanares River, Finca Vista Alegre and Feria del Campo. Author of the study
of urban evolution in the built banks of the river Manzanares. Publishes in international journals
and conferences, specializing in architecture, urban design, exhibition spaces and buildings.

jose.decoca@upm.es
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