by
Tom Gurney BSc (Hons) is an art history expert with over 20 years experience
Published on June 19, 2020 / Updated on November 6, 2026
Email: tomgurney1@gmail.com / Phone: +44 7429 011000

Felix Klee and Paul Klee

Felix Klee was the only child of the painter Paul Klee and the pianist Lily Klee, née Stumpf. His place in the artist's story extends beyond childhood portraits. He grew up within a household shaped by music, teaching and visual invention, then helped preserve the documents through which later generations came to understand his father. His role is best understood through the family biography and archive, rather than by treating every reference to his name as the title of a particular painting.

The Zentrum Paul Klee's biography records Felix's birth on 30 November 1907, following Paul and Lily's marriage in 1906 and their move to Munich. Its accounts of the collection and archive also identify Felix as a significant custodian of the family legacy. This page considers those two connected roles: child within the working household and adult participant in the transmission of an artist's life. [1] [2]

At a Glance

  • PersonFelix Klee, son of Paul and Lily Klee
  • Born30 November 1907
  • FocusFamily life and the preservation of the archive

Contents

  1. A household of visual art and music
  2. The child as an observed subject
  3. Childhood and artistic invention
  4. Growing up beside the Bauhaus years
  5. Felix as custodian of the family archive
  6. From family collection to public institution

A household of visual art and music

Paul Klee's art developed in a family where music was a serious practice. His parents were musicians, Lily was a pianist, and musical activity remained part of the environment in which Felix grew up. It is tempting to turn that fact into a simple explanation of every rhythmic line or repeated shape in Klee's paintings. A more useful approach keeps the family context distinct from the interpretation of an individual work.

A musical household provides habits of practice, listening and repetition. A child's experience of those habits need not be identical to a painter's. Felix was not simply an illustration of his father's theories. He was a person growing up among adults whose work required preparation, concentration and performance.

This distinction matters when considering accounts of the Klee family. Domestic life can inform an artist's work without becoming its complete subject. Likewise, the fact that a child appears in a drawing does not make that drawing a transparent record of family relationships. It is still a constructed image, made with particular materials and decisions about emphasis.

The child as an observed subject

Drawings of children present a practical challenge. A young sitter moves, changes expression and rarely maintains an academic pose. An artist may respond through a few rapid marks, repeated attempts or a selective description of the head and body. Such work can preserve an encounter without pretending to record every visible detail.

For a viewer, the important questions are concrete. Does the drawing establish a weight-bearing body or concentrate on a face? Is the line continuous, exploratory or broken? Are the proportions descriptive, exaggerated or deliberately simplified? These observations are more reliable than assuming that looseness automatically expresses affection or that distortion reveals a specific psychological condition.

The family relationship makes a portrait of Felix biographically meaningful, but the image also belongs to Klee's wider investigation of drawing. The artist could move between observation, caricature and invented forms. A child's likeness should be read within that range, rather than used to collapse every experimental figure into a portrait of his son.

Childhood and artistic invention

Klee's interest in apparently simple forms has often encouraged comparisons with children's drawings. Those comparisons require care. A trained adult artist's selective simplification is not the same act as a child learning how to represent a figure or a place. Similar-looking marks can emerge from very different kinds of knowledge.

The presence of Felix in the household gives the subject a human dimension, but it does not prove that a particular painting was copied from one of his drawings. Such a claim needs a specific document or a surviving work that can be compared. Without that evidence, it is better to discuss the visible relationship between economy, invention and legibility.

This also changes the meaning of the word playful. Play can involve rules, testing and revision. A face made from a few marks may look effortless while depending on an exact choice of spacing. Klee's art can acknowledge the openness of childhood without surrendering the adult painter's capacity to organise a surface.

Growing up beside the Bauhaus years

The Zentrum's chronology places Klee's Bauhaus teaching within the family's longer movement between places and institutions. Felix's childhood and adolescence overlapped with a period in which his father's professional life became increasingly public. Teaching introduced another relationship between making and explanation: the painter had to consider how formal ideas could be communicated to students. [1]

It is useful to distinguish the classroom, the studio and the home. They could influence one another, but they were not interchangeable spaces. A lesson about the development of a line was addressed to students within a curriculum. A family drawing might arise from a much more immediate encounter. A finished painting could transform an idea again for exhibition.

Keeping those settings separate prevents a romantic picture of the artist's household from replacing historical understanding. Felix's presence belongs to the biography, while the educational work has its own surviving manuscripts, institutional circumstances and participants.

Felix as custodian of the family archive

The later history of the archive is one of Felix's most consequential contributions. The Zentrum Paul Klee describes him as having preserved family mementoes over decades and made important parts accessible to the public. After his death in 1990, his heirs, Livia Klee-Meyer and Alexander Klee, decided to give documents from the family archive to the institution. [2]

Preservation is not a passive background activity. Photographs, letters, notebooks and recollections make different kinds of evidence available. They can establish a date, identify a relationship or show the circumstances in which an image was made. They can also preserve the perspective of a particular family member, which must be distinguished from a complete account of the past.

A recollection recorded long afterwards should therefore be read differently from a letter written during an event. Both may be valuable. The difference lies in what each can establish and how directly it speaks to the moment being reconstructed.

From family collection to public institution

The Paul Klee Foundation's history records Felix's involvement in its work and the contribution of photographs and books from his collections. Its account describes the development of documentation, archive and library resources that supported the later catalogue raisonné. The family legacy thus became part of a wider scholarly infrastructure, rather than remaining solely a private inheritance. [3]

The Zentrum's account of its own foundation places subsequent family gifts alongside other contributions that made the museum possible. Livia Klee-Meyer's 1997 gift and Alexander Klee's loans and documents helped establish the collection's public future. These were related stages in a long process, not one single transfer made by one person. [4]

Felix's significance emerges most clearly when those stages are kept visible. He was a child whom his father could observe and depict; an adult who remembered the household from within; and a custodian whose preservation of objects and documents shaped later research. Understanding all three roles gives a fuller account of the relationship than treating him only as the subject of a charming family image.

Artworks and records

The published artist directory is retained here. Historical titles and attributions remain as recorded in that existing catalogue.

217 records

NameDateRecord
A Gate1939Painting
A Woman for Gods1938Painting
Ab Ovo1917Painting
Above Mountain Summit1917Drawing
Abstract Trio1923Drawing
Acrobats1915Painting
Actor's Mask1924Painting
Ad Marginem1930Drawing
Ad Parnassum1932Painting
Adventurer Ship1927Drawing
Affected Place1922Drawing
After a Sketch from Zurich1914Painting
After Drawing1919Drawing
After The Floods1936Painting
All Souls' Picture1921Drawing
Ancient Harmony1925Painting
Angel Applicant1939Drawing
Angel Serves the Desired1920Drawing
Angel, Still Female1939Painting
Angelus Novus1920Drawing
Animal Terror1926Painting
Arab Song1932Painting
Archangel1938Painting
Architecture1923Painting
Architecture of the Plain1923Drawing
Around the Fish1926Painting
Arrival of the Air Steamer1921Drawing
Asiatic God1924Painting
Astrological Fantasy Portrait1924Drawing
Athlete's Head1932Painting
Aufgehender Stern1931Painting
Autumn Flower1922Painting
Bad Band1920Drawing
Baroque Centaur1939Painting
Before the Blitz1923Drawing
Before the Snow1929Drawing
Besessenes Madchen1924Painting
Bird Garden1924Drawing
Bird Wandering Off1926Painting
Blossoms in the Night1930Painting
Blue-Bird-Pumpkin1939Painting
Boats in the Flood1937Painting
Botanical Theatre1934Drawing
Boy in Fancy Dress1931Painting
Broken Key1938Drawing
Brother and Sister1930Painting
But the Red Roof1935Painting
C - C = Fisch1931Painting
Cacti1912Painting
Camel (in Rhythmic Landscape with Trees)1920Drawing
Captive Pierrot1923Drawing
Castle and Sun1928Drawing
Cat and Bird1928Drawing
Cathedrals1925Painting
Chalice of the Heart1937Painting
Characters in Yellow1937Painting
Chosen Site1927Painting
Christmas Picture1923Drawing
City of Towers1916Painting
Clarification1932Painting
Collection of Figurines1926Painting
Colorful Architecture1917Painting
Comedians' Handbill1938Drawing
Comic Opera Singer1927Painting
Composition1939Painting
Composition with Figures1915Drawing
Composition with the Yellow Half-Moon and the Y1918Painting
Conch–Still Life II1939Painting
Cosmic Composition1919Painting
Crystal Gradation1921Drawing
Dance of the Grieving Child1922Painting
Dancing Girl1940Painting
Das Licht und Etliches1931Painting
Death and Fire1940Painting
Death for the Idea1915Drawing
Demon as Pirate1926Painting
Diana1931Painting
Diavolo Player1923Drawing
Die Kapelle1917Painting
Die Vase1938Painting
Doctor1930Drawing
Dredger and Sailboat1931Painting
Ein Tor1939Painting
Ein Weib fur Gotter1938Painting
Embrace1939Painting
Episode before an Arab Town1923Drawing
Equals Infinity1932Painting
Eros1923Drawing
Error on Green1930Painting
Evening Figure1935Drawing
Falling Bird1919Drawing
Fermata1932Painting
Fire Clown1921Painting
Fire Full Moon1933Painting
Fire in the Evening1929Painting
Fish in the Harbour1916Painting
Fish Magic1925Painting
Flock of Birds1917Drawing
Flora on Sand1927Painting
Flower Myth1918Drawing
Flower Stand with Watering Can and Bucket1910Painting
Flowering Tree (Abstraction with Reference to a Flowering Tree)1925Painting
Flowers in Pots1923Drawing
Flowers in Stone1939Painting
Forest Witch1938Painting
Fright of a Girl1922Drawing
Fruits on Red1930Drawing
Full Moon1919Painting
Föhn Wind in Franz Marc's Garden1915Painting
Garden in St Germain, The European Quarter near Tunis1914Painting
Ghost Chamber with the Tall Door (New Version)1925Drawing
Ghost of a Genius1922Drawing
Girl in Mourning1939Painting
Glance of a Landscape1926Painting
Gluht Nach1939Drawing
Golden Fish1925Painting
Goldfish Wife1921Painting
Green Plant, Blood, Louse1924Drawing
Hafenbild1918Painting
Hammamet with Mosque1914Painting
Harbour with Sailing Ships1937Painting
Hauptweg und Nebenwege1929Painting
Heavenly and Earthly Time1927Drawing
Heroic Fiddling1938Painting
Heroic Roses1938Painting
Heroic Strokes of the Bow—Painting
Highway and Byways1929Drawing
Houses near the Gravel Pit1913Painting
Howling Dog1928Painting
In the Current Six Thresholds1929Painting
In the Style of Kairouan1914Drawing
Individualized Altimetry of Stripes1930Painting
Insula Dulcamara1938Drawing
Interior with the Clock1913Painting
Irma Rossa the Animal Tamer1918Drawing
Journey in Corsica1927Drawing
Landscape with Bluebirds1919Painting
Legend of the Nile1937Painting
Lemon Harvest1937Painting
Likeness in the Bower1930Painting
Limits of Reason1927Painting
Little Hope1938Painting
Magdalena before the Conversion1938Drawing
Mask of Fear1932Painting
May Picture1925Painting
Monument in a Cemetery1922Painting
Monuments at G1929Painting
Municipal Jewel1917Painting
Mural from the Temple of Longing Thither1922Drawing
Nach der Uberschwemmung1936Painting
New Harmony1936Painting
New House in the Suburbs—Painting
Old Steamboat1922Drawing
On the Edge1930Drawing
Once Emerged from the Gray of Night1918Drawing
One Who Understands1934Painting
Oriental Pleasure Garden1925Painting
Park of Idols1939Painting
Passing by Red Pillars1928Painting
Persian Nightingales1917Drawing
Popular Wall Painting1922Painting
Prestidigitator1927Painting
Rainy Day1931Painting
Red and White Domes1914Painting
Red Balloon1922Drawing
Redgreen and Violet-Yellow Rhythms1920Drawing
Refuge1930Painting
Rhythmic Rythmical1930Painting
Saint of the Inner Light1921Drawing
Scaffolding of a New Building1930Painting
Scholar in Dealing with Stars1926Painting
Seated Woman1930Drawing
Senecio1922Painting
Separation in the Evening1922Drawing
Sinbad the Sailor1923Drawing
Skeptically Smiling—Painting
Small House in the Garden City1928Painting
Small Portrait of a Girl in Yellow1925Painting
Southern Gardens1919Painting
Static-Dynamic Gradation1923Drawing
Still Life1927Painting
Still Life with Gladioli1932Painting
Strange Garden1923Drawing
Stricken City1936Painting
Strong Dream1929Painting
Struck from the List1933Drawing
Structural I1924Drawing
Sumpflegende1919Painting
Temple Gardens1920Drawing
The Arrow before the Target1921Drawing
The Barbed Noose with the Mice1923Painting
The Flora of the Heath1925Painting
The Goldfish1925Painting
The Hour Before One Night1940Painting
The Man in Love1923Drawing
The Mask with the Flag1925Painting
The Pathos of Fertility1921Drawing
The Rhine at Duisburg1937Painting
The Way to the Citadel1937Painting
Three Houses and a Bridge1922Painting
Tightrope Walker1923Drawing
Tomb in Three Parts1923Painting
Tomcat's Turf1919Painting
Tower in Orange and Green1922Drawing
Tree and Architecture - Rhythms I1920Painting
Tree and Architecture - Rhythms II1920Painting
Tropical Dawn with the Owl1921Painting
Tropische Dammerung1921Painting
Twittering Machine1922Drawing
Variations (Progressive Motif)1927Painting
Ventriloquist and Crier in the Moor1923Drawing
Viaducts Break Ranks1937Drawing
Villa R1919Painting
Village Carnival1926Painting
Vor dem Blitz1923Drawing
Wald-Hexen1938Painting
Young Forest1925Drawing

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References

  1. Zentrum Paul Klee, Paul Klee biography and chronology. View source.
  2. Zentrum Paul Klee, Paul Klee – Leben und Nachleben, family archive and Felix Klee. View source.
  3. Zentrum Paul Klee, history of the Paul-Klee-Stiftung. View source.
  4. Zentrum Paul Klee, 2025 anniversary press kit, institutional and collection history. View source.