Paul Klee (Getting to Know the World's Greatest Artists)

Rating:
Summary: Paul Klee
Review: I was not a fan of this artist until I saw his work in a museum. It was there that I discovered a unique array of creativity and imagination that brought about colors, lines, forms, music and rhythm all within a painting.
This book gave a brief yet descriptive history about one of the less talked abstract artists in history. His eclectic painting techniques and style grasped the attention of many different spectators.
I enjoyed reading and sharing this book to others, especially kids. The book opened the eyes of students who found it difficult to find their inner creativity. The book also talks about how music and rhythm are incorporated into his abstract and colorful paintings.


Rating:
Summary: A fabulous introduction to the great art of Paul Klee
Review: I have been reading all of the volumes in the Getting to Know the World's Greatest Artists series that I can find and as a general rule I have found them informative and entertaining introductions for young readers to the lives and works of Botticelli, Goya, Picasso and many others. But in reading Mike Venezia's volume on Paul Klee I think I may well have discovered my favorite artist of the 20th century (a separate issue from favorite illustrator, which would be Barry Windsor-Smith). I must have seen a work or two by Klee at some point in my sojourn through life, but I was quite impressed by the dozen or so examples of his work found here. Venezia explains at one point that many of Klee's greatest paintings are just colors and shapes, using "Fire at Evening" as the only example, which is fine with me because that was pretty much the only painting in the volume I would not mind having on a wall somewhere in the house.

It is not like Klee does the same thing over and over again. "The Goldfish" is quite different from "Around the Fish" (see cover), although I clearly a preference for watercolor and pen artwork, such as "Carnival in the Mountains" and "Twittering Machine." My favorite is "Magic Garden" and I think the great attraction of Klee for young readers is that his artwork is pretty much something they can do in their own art classes or at home. As always, this book is illustrated with not only works by Klee, but by some of his closest contemporaries (which only helps to prove his superiority) as well as Venezia's cartoons, which emphasize key events or aspects of Klee's life (e.g., tracing patterns he saw in marble table tops at his Uncle Ernst's restaurant). I look forward to other volumes in this series about abstract artists, but I am pretty sure I am not going to change my mind about liking Klee best. Sorry guys.