Paul Klee

Paul Klee taught at the Bauhaus beginning in 1921, alongside artists such as Wassily Kandinsky. His classroom ideas about line, color, and form shaped how modern art was taught in Germany.

Twittering Machine, made in 1922, shows strange birdlike forms attached to a crank-like mechanism. It is often read as playful and unsettling at once, which is typical of Klee's mix of fantasy and abstraction.

Klee was born near Bern in Switzerland in 1879, but much of his career unfolded in Germany. He is usually described as Swiss-born and closely tied to German modernism.

Klee deliberately used simple signs, floating figures, and playful marks, but the work is carefully structured. Paintings such as Senecio from 1922 show how he turned childlike geometry into sophisticated modern art.