Notebooks

A set of working documents

Paul Klee’s “notebooks” are often invoked as though he had left a finished, two-volume explanation of his art. The surviving papers tell a more interesting story. At the Bauhaus he wrote out an early sequence of form lessons in a paginated manuscript book, then developed a much larger collection of teaching sheets that he altered and reused. He published a short Pädagogisches Skizzenbuch (Pedagogical Sketchbook) in 1925. The two large volumes commonly called the Notebooks were arranged and issued after his death. A line or colour diagram can be read differently depending on which of these objects it comes from.^[1][2][3]

This page follows the documents rather than treating them as a universal key to Klee’s paintings. Four spreads of the German 1925 book can be examined directly here: they show active lines and passive planes, a tower balanced by successive corrections, the movement of an arrow, and a colour diagram revised because its first arrangement misled. Other claims about his unpublished lesson sheets are tied to the Zentrum Paul Klee’s archive description and to scholarship that has examined the manuscripts. That distinction matters: a printed spread available to inspect is different evidence from a later account of a folio we have not seen.^[1][2][4]

Contents

1. What exactly are the “notebooks”?
2. What did Klee publish during his lifetime?
3. An active line is more than a slogan
4. Balance is an event, not just symmetry
5. Gravity, arrows and the limits of analogy
6. A colour scheme Klee revises in front of the reader
7. What did later editors make of the papers?
8. How can a reader check a notebook claim?

What exactly are the “notebooks”?

The name covers several physical and editorial forms. Klee’s Beiträge zur bildnerischen Formlehre (Contributions to Pictorial Form Theory) is a manuscript book of 192 pages, paginated by him, associated with his first Bauhaus lecture cycle in 1921–22. It is a bounded sequence of handwritten teaching material, even though it was made for lessons rather than published at the time as a book for sale. Martina Scholger’s detailed review of the digital edition identifies line, perspective, balance, composition and colour among its subjects.^[1][2]

Klee’s later Bildnerische Gestaltungslehre (Pictorial Design Theory) is different: approximately 3,900 pages of notes in notebooks and loose sheets. He organised much of the material thematically in envelopes and reassembled parts for teaching over several years. The Zentrum Paul Klee describes the archive as a folder of lesson notes alongside the smaller Formlehre book. Scholger reports that Klee envisaged 24 chapters, including general principles, two-dimensional design and three-dimensional form. Those chapter headings are an architecture for thinking through the material, not a list of 24 finished books published by Klee.^[1][2]

This difference affects chronology. A loose page may have been drafted, changed, moved and taught again. The order in which it survives can reflect Klee’s own grouping and later archival work by Lily Klee and Jürg Spiller. A modern reader cannot infer from its current folder position alone the date of its first classroom use or a single final version of Klee’s thought. Dated lecture notes, calendars and student records help, but the surviving timetable has gaps. The Bauhaus teaching page follows that chronology in more detail.^[2][5]

Calling the archive “two notebooks” also obscures its physical variety. The early lecture book, numerous later leaves, the lifetime printed booklet and two posthumous edited volumes are four different levels of evidence. The most useful first question is therefore: Which document, which edition and which page is being cited?^[1][2][3]

What did Klee publish during his lifetime?

His Pädagogisches Skizzenbuch appeared in 1925 as volume 2 of the Bauhausbücher series, published in Munich by Albert Langen. It condensed selected ideas developed in teaching into a small, designed work. The institutional Bauhaus publication lists and the Metropolitan Museum’s library record confirm the volume number and year. The Met describes its own copy as a second edition, so its exact collation should not be silently assigned to every printing.^[3][6]

The booklet has a distinct structure. Heidelberg University Library’s digitisation lists four numbered parts, and the printed pages themselves show a progression from lines and surfaces through balance and motion to colour. Klee supplied diagrams and short explanatory text. The forms on the page may seem elementary—a point, arrow, square, weight or coloured pair—but the argument is often about a change in role or relation. A line may act on a plane in one drawing and serve as a boundary in another. The book is a compact set of experiments in visual thinking, not a catalogue of motifs for students to copy into finished pictures.^[3][7]

Klee also published Wege des Naturstudiums (Ways of Studying Nature) in the Bauhaus catalogue Staatliches Bauhaus in Weimar 1919–1923. The catalogue’s own contents place his essay alongside contributions by Gertrud Grunow and Wassily Kandinsky; the 1923 publication presented the school and its teaching to a public beyond the classrooms. That text is not a chapter of the later Spiller “notebooks”. Its concern with the artist’s relation to nature belongs to Klee’s lifetime written record, but its original pages need direct consultation before quoting or closely analysing them here.^[8][9]

The relation between the 1925 booklet and the larger manuscripts is therefore selective. Scholger calls the printed work a compressed publication drawn from the earlier form teaching. It neither reproduces all 192 manuscript pages nor anticipates every later sheet. Its sequence and design are a published statement by Klee; the much larger archive shows a longer working process.^[2][3]

An active line is more than a slogan

One sentence is regularly attributed to Klee: “drawing is a line going for a walk.” That wording is a useful modern paraphrase of an idea in the 1925 booklet, but it should not be set in quotation marks as his exact English sentence. The German opening describes an active line that moves freely, in a walk for its own sake, with the moving point as its agent. The discussion continues through changes of direction, boundaries and the relation of line to the area it forms. It does not say that every Klee drawing is made without purpose, measurement or revision.^[10]

Printed pages 10–11 make the later part of that argument more exact. Under the heading “three cases”, the left page shows an active line and passive plane, then a “medial” line whose energy gives a plane effect, then an active filled plane for which the enclosing line has become passive. On the facing page, a larger scheme arranges active, medial and passive regions. A short verbal analogy uses different ways in which a tree can be felled to explain agency. The same visual ingredient can occupy a different role depending on what acts and what receives an effect.^[7]

This example is pedagogically useful because the diagrams do not ask students simply to imitate one kind of line. They ask them to observe a relation: what initiates a form, what is changed by it, and how the viewer recognises that change. At the same time, Klee’s terms are his teaching model, not a scientific classification valid for every image. A scholar comparing a particular painting with the exercise would still need the painting’s date, surface and documented relation to the lesson.^[5][7]

Balance is an event, not just symmetry

Printed pages 34–35 shift the discussion to weight and correction. Klee draws a horizontal axis tipped by a heavier dark area. A later dark mark on the other side compensates for the visual imbalance. His prose compares a person swaying left and extending a hand or foot to avoid a fall. The analogy gives an immediate bodily example for a visual effect, while the diagram tests the effect with quite spare geometry.^[11]

The facing page is headed Turmbau—tower building. Blocks laid one above another alternately pull the construction left and right; a further stone restores the relation. Beside the stack, pivot points become a zigzag. What looked like one stationary tower is also a record of successive disturbances and responses. This makes “balance” more specific than a rule that the two halves of an image must match. Unequal parts can answer one another, and the sequence by which they are placed matters.^[11]

Klee was not describing a real building’s load calculations. He borrowed familiar experiences of weight and leaning to make a pictorial relation discussable. One can use the spread to look at a Klee work in which a dark patch or angled structure changes the sense of balance, but a resemblance alone is not proof that the work illustrates this very page. The booklet is a tool for looking as well as a historical document of teaching.^[11]

Gravity, arrows and the limits of analogy

Printed pages 46–47 develop two different paths. One diagram follows an earth-bound rise that returns under gravity; another proposes a curve moving away from Earth. Klee’s accompanying text contrasts earthly attraction with a hypothetical motion beyond it. On the next page, a dark arrow emerges from a marked origin into a field of white, and his prose discusses how direction and contrast focus the eye. These are not physics lessons in the modern experimental sense. They are pictorial analogies constructed from observed or imagined movement.^[12]

This distinction prevents two easy misreadings. Klee did not merely draw decorative arrows, but neither can every arrow in a painting be assigned one fixed metaphysical destination. In a named picture it might direct attention, interrupt a field, point to a figure or become the figure itself. The documented booklet spread shows how he reasoned about a graphic element; the interpretation of each artwork still begins with what is visibly present and what the object record can support.^[12]

The Zentrum Paul Klee’s account of its Bewegte Bilder exhibition separately identifies unpublished lesson folios about gravity and movement: BG II.21/13, BG II.21/77 and BF 64. It quotes and interprets them in German. Those folio references are valuable routes for a future direct manuscript comparison, especially for his description of water as an intermediate realm where buoyancy changes the relation to gravity. They are not pages of the 1925 booklet, and this page does not claim to have inspected their facsimiles directly.^[4]

A colour scheme Klee revises in front of the reader

Printed pages 50–51 offer perhaps the clearest warning against treating his diagrams as immutable laws. Three colour pairs—green/red, blue/orange and violet/yellow—are arranged as opposite movements about a neutral grey. Klee then explains why a tempting next diagram is misleading: it places a green-to-red step against a blue-to-orange step as though those transitions themselves were opposed. He redraws the relations diagonally and eventually arrives at a circular arrangement of the spectral colours.^[13]

The point is visible revision. The drawings change because one arrangement falsely implies a relation that Klee does not want to teach. A colour diagram is a made representation whose geometry can clarify or confuse. This is more useful to a reader than imagining a single “Klee colour wheel” that automatically decodes his paintings. The book’s printed final drawing remains one solution within this particular explanation, not an exhaustive inventory of how he mixed pigments or built coloured surfaces.^[13][14]

Marianne Keller Tschirren’s dissertation provides a wider teaching context. By reading Klee’s notes and student notebooks, she shows him comparing older colour systems associated with Goethe and Runge with later proposals by Ostwald and Koelsch. His teaching changed by term, and a planned order in his notes did not prove that every part was delivered unchanged. This matters when a painted gradation or grid seems to echo a diagram: the comparison can be productive, but the work is a physical object with its own date and process. The colour page carries that broader question.^[5][14]

What did later editors make of the papers?

After Klee died in 1940, his teaching material had to be kept, sorted and made accessible. Scholger reports that Klee had grouped loose notes in thematic envelopes and that Lily Klee and Jürg Spiller later numbered material in its inherited order. Later inventory work at the Zentrum Paul Klee could bring old and new numbers together and describe individual sheets. This archival labour is necessary for research, but it also means that a modern order is an editorial account of a changing set of papers.^[1][2]

Spiller edited two substantial German volumes: Das bildnerische Denken in 1956 and Unendliche Naturgeschichte in 1970. Their English counterparts are The Thinking Eye (1961, translated by Ralph Manheim) and The Nature of Nature (1973, translated by Heinz Norden). These titles have made Klee’s teaching famous internationally. They are also posthumous editions, assembled by someone other than Klee. Sibyl Moholy-Nagy’s English Pedagogical Sketchbook translates the separate 1925 booklet; it is not a third title for either large Spiller volume.^[2][15][16]

The editorial distinction is not pedantry. Scholger summarises a longstanding criticism of Spiller’s volumes: he rearranged the manuscripts and introduced his own diagrams without always identifying those interventions clearly. The resulting books can make a developing set of notes look like a complete, static system. That criticism does not make the volumes useless; it changes how they should be cited. A claim about Klee’s exact sequence of thought should, where possible, be checked against the original sheet or the later critical digital edition, not inferred from Spiller’s printed ordering alone.^[2]

The Zentrum Paul Klee’s digital project, developed in 2008–12, placed facsimiles, transcriptions and descriptions online. Scholger praises its access to the full Gestaltungslehre while identifying limitations: transcriptions presented as images rather than reusable text, unequal facsimile resolution, and insufficient explanation of some layered alterations. Her review is itself a guide to asking better questions. A crossed-out word, later addition or changed sheet number may reveal that Klee reused a lesson; a clean typeset extract may conceal that history.^[2]

How can a reader check a notebook claim?

Begin by identifying the kind of source. Is the quotation from Klee’s 1925 published booklet, a handwritten Formlehre page, one of the loose Gestaltungslehre sheets, a student’s copy, or a posthumous edition? Then record the original German title, printed page or manuscript folio, and the edition or archive that supplies it. The Zentrum Paul Klee uses BF and BG identifiers for teaching materials; a printed-book page such as 50–51 is a different locator.^[1][2][4]

Next ask what the diagram and text do together. On page 10, the change from active line to active plane is hard to understand if the small drawings are stripped from their labels. On page 35, the tower is more than a shape: arrows and pivot marks show a series of counterweights. On page 51, the sequence of revised colour diagrams is itself part of the argument. A transcription of words alone can miss these relationships; an isolated picture can miss Klee’s qualification beside it.^[7][11][13]

Finally separate the document from its later application. A student exercise can show what someone made after a class, but that student remains its maker. A Klee painting can share a rhythm with a teaching example without being a literal assignment sheet. The best interpretation states which relation is observed and what evidence links the two objects. It leaves a gap visible when the relevant classroom record, painting technical file or original folio has not been checked.^[5][17]

The notebook legacy rests in this openness to checking. Klee’s pages record a teacher making visual decisions explainable: moving a point, shifting the role of a line, correcting a balance, revising a colour arrangement. The papers were never one sealed code. Their survival, later editing and digitisation let us see how artistic thought was worked through, taught, rearranged and read again.^{[1][2][7][11][13]}

Continue with Klee’s Bauhaus teaching, colours, materials and techniques and biography.

Explore selected works from Klee’s much larger oeuvre. Titles without a link have an authenticated catalogue identity but no reviewed article yet.

Artworks directory

217 artworks

Search artworks Medium All media Drawing Painting Reset

Name	Date	Medium
A Gate	1939	Painting and mixed media
A Woman for Gods	1938	Watercolour and mixed media
Ab Ovo	1917	Watercolour and mixed media
Above Mountain Summit	1917	Drawing and mixed media
Abstract Trio	1923	Drawing and mixed media
Acrobats	1915	Watercolour and mixed media
Actor's Mask	1924	Painting and mixed media
Ad Marginem	1930	Drawing and mixed media
Ad Parnassum	1932	Painting and mixed media
Adventurer Ship	1927	Drawing and mixed media
Affected Place	1922	Drawing and mixed media
After a Sketch from Zurich	1914	Watercolour and mixed media
After Drawing	1919	Print
After The Floods	1936	Watercolour and mixed media
All Souls' Picture	1921	Print
Ancient Harmony	1925	Painting and mixed media
Angel Applicant	1939	Drawing and mixed media
Angel Serves the Desired	1920	Print
Angel, Still Female	1939	Painting and mixed media
Angelus Novus	1920	Drawing and mixed media
Animal Terror	1926	Painting and mixed media
Arab Song	1932	Painting and mixed media
Archangel	1938	Painting and mixed media
Architecture	1923	Painting and mixed media
Architecture of the Plain	1923	Drawing and mixed media
Around the Fish	1926	Painting and mixed media
Arrival of the Air Steamer	1921	Drawing and mixed media
Asiatic God	1924	Painting and mixed media
Astrological Fantasy Portrait	1924	Drawing and mixed media
Athlete's Head	1932	Watercolour and mixed media
Aufgehender Stern	1931	Painting and mixed media
Autumn Flower	1922	Painting and mixed media
Bad Band	1920	Drawing and mixed media
Baroque Centaur	1939	Painting and mixed media
Before the Blitz	1923	Drawing and mixed media
Before the Snow	1929	Drawing and mixed media
Besessenes Madchen	1924	Watercolour and mixed media
Bird Garden	1924	Print
Bird Wandering Off	1926	Watercolour and mixed media
Blossoms in the Night	1930	Watercolour and mixed media
Blue-Bird-Pumpkin	1939	Painting and mixed media
Boats in the Flood	1937	Painting and mixed media
Botanical Theatre	1934	Drawing and mixed media
Boy in Fancy Dress	1931	Watercolour and mixed media
Broken Key	1938	Print
Brother and Sister	1930	Watercolour and mixed media
But the Red Roof	1935	Painting and mixed media
C - C = Fisch	1931	Watercolour and mixed media
Cacti	1912	Painting and mixed media
Camel (in Rhythmic Landscape with Trees)	1920	Drawing and mixed media
Captive Pierrot	1923	Drawing and mixed media
Castle and Sun	1928	Drawing and mixed media
Cat and Bird	1928	Drawing and mixed media
Cathedrals	1925	Watercolour and mixed media
Chalice of the Heart	1937	Painting and mixed media
Characters in Yellow	1937	Painting and mixed media
Chosen Site	1927	Mixed media
Christmas Picture	1923	Drawing and mixed media
City of Towers	1916	Painting and mixed media
Clarification	1932	Painting and mixed media
Collection of Figurines	1926	Painting and mixed media
Colorful Architecture	1917	Painting and mixed media
Comedians' Handbill	1938	Print
Comic Opera Singer	1927	Painting and mixed media
Composition	1939	Painting and mixed media
Composition with Figures	1915	Drawing and mixed media
Composition with the Yellow Half-Moon and the Y	1918	Watercolour and mixed media
Conch–Still Life II	1939	Watercolour and mixed media
Cosmic Composition	1919	Painting and mixed media
Crystal Gradation	1921	Drawing and mixed media
Dance of the Grieving Child	1922	Painting and mixed media
Dancing Girl	1940	Painting and mixed media
Das Licht und Etliches	1931	Mixed media
Death and Fire	1940	Painting and mixed media
Death for the Idea	1915	Print
Demon as Pirate	1926	Watercolour and mixed media
Diana	1931	Painting and mixed media
Diavolo Player	1923	Drawing and mixed media
Die Kapelle	1917	Watercolour and mixed media
Die Vase	1938	Painting and mixed media
Doctor	1930	Drawing and mixed media
Dredger and Sailboat	1931	Watercolour and mixed media
Ein Tor	1939	Painting and mixed media
Ein Weib fur Gotter	1938	Mixed media
Embrace	1939	Watercolour and mixed media
Episode before an Arab Town	1923	Print
Equals Infinity	1932	Painting and mixed media
Eros	1923	Drawing and mixed media
Error on Green	1930	Watercolour and mixed media
Evening Figure	1935	Drawing and mixed media
Falling Bird	1919	Print
Fermata	1932	Watercolour and mixed media
Fire Clown	1921	Watercolour and mixed media
Fire Full Moon	1933	Watercolour and mixed media
Fire in the Evening	1929	Painting and mixed media
Fish in the Harbour	1916	Watercolour and mixed media
Fish Magic	1925	Watercolour and mixed media
Flock of Birds	1917	Drawing and mixed media
Flora on Sand	1927	Watercolour and mixed media
Flower Myth	1918	Print
Flower Stand with Watering Can and Bucket	1910	Watercolour and mixed media
Flowering Tree (Abstraction with Reference to a Flowering Tree)	1925	Painting and mixed media
Flowers in Pots	1923	Print
Flowers in Stone	1939	Painting and mixed media
Forest Witch	1938	Painting and mixed media
Fright of a Girl	1922	Drawing and mixed media
Fruits on Red	1930	Drawing and mixed media
Full Moon	1919	Mixed media
Föhn Wind in Franz Marc's Garden	1915	Watercolour and mixed media
Garden in St Germain, The European Quarter near Tunis	1914	Watercolour and mixed media
Ghost Chamber with the Tall Door (New Version)	1925	Print
Ghost of a Genius	1922	Drawing and mixed media
Girl in Mourning	1939	Painting and mixed media
Glance of a Landscape	1926	Watercolour and mixed media
Gluht Nach	1939	Drawing and mixed media
Golden Fish	1925	Watercolour and mixed media
Goldfish Wife	1921	Watercolour and mixed media
Green Plant, Blood, Louse	1924	Drawing and mixed media
Hafenbild	1918	Mixed media
Hammamet with Mosque	1914	Watercolour and mixed media
Harbour with Sailing Ships	1937	Painting and mixed media
Hauptweg und Nebenwege	1929	Painting and mixed media
Heavenly and Earthly Time	1927	Drawing and mixed media
Heroic Fiddling	1938	Painting and mixed media
Heroic Roses	1938	Painting and mixed media
Heroic Strokes of the Bow	—	Mixed media
Highway and Byways	1929	Drawing and mixed media
Houses near the Gravel Pit	1913	Watercolour and mixed media
Howling Dog	1928	Painting and mixed media
In the Current Six Thresholds	1929	Painting and mixed media
In the Style of Kairouan	1914	Drawing and mixed media
Individualized Altimetry of Stripes	1930	Painting and mixed media
Insula Dulcamara	1938	Print
Interior with the Clock	1913	Watercolour and mixed media
Irma Rossa the Animal Tamer	1918	Drawing and mixed media
Journey in Corsica	1927	Drawing and mixed media
Landscape with Bluebirds	1919	Watercolour and mixed media
Legend of the Nile	1937	Painting and mixed media
Lemon Harvest	1937	Watercolour and mixed media
Likeness in the Bower	1930	Watercolour and mixed media
Limits of Reason	1927	Painting and mixed media
Little Hope	1938	Watercolour and mixed media
Magdalena before the Conversion	1938	Drawing and mixed media
Mask of Fear	1932	Painting and mixed media
May Picture	1925	Painting and mixed media
Monument in a Cemetery	1922	Watercolour and mixed media
Monuments at G	1929	Watercolour and mixed media
Municipal Jewel	1917	Watercolour and mixed media
Mural from the Temple of Longing Thither	1922	Print
Nach der Uberschwemmung	1936	Watercolour and mixed media
New Harmony	1936	Painting and mixed media
New House in the Suburbs	—	Mixed media
Old Steamboat	1922	Drawing and mixed media
On the Edge	1930	Drawing and mixed media
Once Emerged from the Gray of Night	1918	Drawing and mixed media
One Who Understands	1934	Painting and mixed media
Oriental Pleasure Garden	1925	Painting and mixed media
Park of Idols	1939	Watercolour and mixed media
Passing by Red Pillars	1928	Watercolour and mixed media
Persian Nightingales	1917	Drawing and mixed media
Popular Wall Painting	1922	Painting and mixed media
Prestidigitator	1927	Watercolour and mixed media
Rainy Day	1931	Watercolour and mixed media
Red and White Domes	1914	Watercolour and mixed media
Red Balloon	1922	Drawing and mixed media
Redgreen and Violet-Yellow Rhythms	1920	Drawing and mixed media
Refuge	1930	Watercolour and mixed media
Rhythmic Rythmical	1930	Painting and mixed media
Saint of the Inner Light	1921	Print
Scaffolding of a New Building	1930	Painting and mixed media
Scholar in Dealing with Stars	1926	Watercolour and mixed media
Seated Woman	1930	Drawing and mixed media
Senecio	1922	Painting and mixed media
Separation in the Evening	1922	Drawing and mixed media
Sinbad the Sailor	1923	Drawing and mixed media
Skeptically Smiling	—	Mixed media
Small House in the Garden City	1928	Watercolour and mixed media
Small Portrait of a Girl in Yellow	1925	Painting and mixed media
Southern Gardens	1919	Watercolour and mixed media
Static-Dynamic Gradation	1923	Drawing and mixed media
Still Life	1927	Painting and mixed media
Still Life with Gladioli	1932	Watercolour and mixed media
Strange Garden	1923	Drawing and mixed media
Stricken City	1936	Painting and mixed media
Strong Dream	1929	Watercolour and mixed media
Struck from the List	1933	Drawing and mixed media
Structural I	1924	Drawing and mixed media
Sumpflegende	1919	Painting and mixed media
Temple Gardens	1920	Drawing and mixed media
The Arrow before the Target	1921	Drawing and mixed media
The Barbed Noose with the Mice	1923	Watercolour and mixed media
The Flora of the Heath	1925	Watercolour and mixed media
The Goldfish	1925	Watercolour and mixed media
The Hour Before One Night	1940	Painting and mixed media
The Man in Love	1923	Print
The Mask with the Flag	1925	Mixed media
The Pathos of Fertility	1921	Print
The Rhine at Duisburg	1937	Painting and mixed media
The Way to the Citadel	1937	Painting and mixed media
Three Houses and a Bridge	1922	Watercolour and mixed media
Tightrope Walker	1923	Print
Tomb in Three Parts	1923	Watercolour and mixed media
Tomcat's Turf	1919	Watercolour and mixed media
Tower in Orange and Green	1922	Drawing and mixed media
Tree and Architecture - Rhythms I	1920	Watercolour and mixed media
Tree and Architecture - Rhythms II	1920	Painting and mixed media
Tropical Dawn with the Owl	1921	Mixed media
Tropische Dammerung	1921	Painting and mixed media
Twittering Machine	1922	Drawing and mixed media
Variations (Progressive Motif)	1927	Watercolour and mixed media
Ventriloquist and Crier in the Moor	1923	Print
Viaducts Break Ranks	1937	Drawing and mixed media
Villa R	1919	Painting and mixed media
Village Carnival	1926	Painting and mixed media
Vor dem Blitz	1923	Drawing and mixed media
Wald-Hexen	1938	Painting and mixed media
Young Forest	1925	Drawing and mixed media

References

1. Zentrum Paul Klee, Archive and research (German; parallel French, Italian and English pages). Describes Klee’s original teaching archive, smaller Formlehre book, approximately 3,900 other pages, student records and onsite research access. The language versions are one institutional source family, View source.
2. Martina Scholger, “Paul Klee – Bildnerische Form- und Gestaltungslehre”, RIDE 4 (2016; German), full review. Documents the 192-page manuscript, later note corpus, Klee’s thematic envelopes, later numbering, Spiller criticism, and the 2008–12 digital edition’s strengths and limits. Its incidental 1949 death-year typo is not used, View source.
3. Bauhaus Kooperation, Bauhaus books and Klee’s Pedagogical Sketchbook (English/German); Heidelberg University Library, 1925 copy landing page (German). Series number, publication and four-part contents map. Heidelberg page/PDF delivery was unavailable for a full read.
4. Zentrum Paul Klee, Paul Klee. Bewegte Bilder (2016–17 exhibition text; German despite the EN route). Identifies and quotes BF 64 and BG II.21/13, /77. The original facsimiles were not directly checked here; claims about them are attributed to the institution, View source.
5. Marianne Keller Tschirren, Dreieck, Kreis, Kugel. Farbenordnungen im Unterricht von Paul Klee am Bauhaus, University of Bern dissertation (2011; German), especially printed pp. 23–31, 82–84 and course appendix pp. 193–96. Directly read; source for changing course sequence, comparisons among colour systems and gaps in the term record, View source.
6. Metropolitan Museum of Art, Watson Library, Pädagogisches Skizzenbuch copy record (English). Identifies its second-edition 1925 copy, publisher and series; its catalogue details describe this copy, View source.
7. Paul Klee, Pädagogisches Skizzenbuch, printed pp. 10–11, Bauhausbücher 2 (Munich, 1925; German), figures 9–12. High-resolution original-book spread read directly. The Commons item marks the scan Public Domain Mark 1.0, View source.
8. Bauhaus Kooperation, Staatliches Bauhaus Weimar 1919–1923 (German), and SLUB Dresden, 1923 digitised catalogue record (German). Sources for the original publication and location of Klee’s essay; original essay pages remain to read in full.
9. Lars Müller Publishers / Bauhaus-Archiv, 2019 facsimile edition (English). Publisher record confirming the catalogue’s 1923 public-school context and later facsimile publication; no claims are drawn from the unread 2019 edition’s commentary, View source.
10. Oskar Bätschmann, “Grammatik der Bewegung” (German; discussing Pädagogisches Skizzenbuch pp. 6–7), and ZPK reference 4. Sources for the “active line” wording and its context; the English slogan is identified as a paraphrase, not a quotation from the original, View source.
11. Paul Klee, Pädagogisches Skizzenbuch, printed pp. 34–35, Bauhausbücher 2 (1925; German), figures 50–52. Original-book spread read directly; item-level Public Domain Mark 1.0, View source.
12. Paul Klee, Pädagogisches Skizzenbuch, printed pp. 46–47, Bauhausbücher 2 (1925; German), figures 74–76. Original-book spread read directly; item-level Public Domain Mark 1.0, View source.
13. Paul Klee, Pädagogisches Skizzenbuch, printed pp. 50–51, Bauhausbücher 2 (1925; German), figures 83–87. Original-book spread read directly; item-level Public Domain Mark 1.0, View source.
14. Keller Tschirren, Dreieck, Kreis, Kugel, printed pp. 82–84 and 141–43; see reference 5. Scholarly comparison of Klee’s classroom colour diagrams, other historical systems and his painting practice.
15. SLUB Dresden, Form- und Gestaltungslehre catalogue record (German/English), and Scholger reference 2. Bibliographic anchors for Spiller’s 1956 and 1970 German editions, View source.
16. ERIC educational bibliography, edition citations (English), and Sitterwerk bibliography (English). Sources for the Manheim and Norden English translations and distinct Moholy-Nagy Sketchbook translation; printing-specific pagination withheld.
17. Fabienne Eggelhöfer, study of Lena Bergner’s Bauhaus class notes (2018; German). Student-owned notes/exercises and the limits of equating a teaching scheme with a finished textile, View source.