Fleeing Ghost

Paul Klee’s artistic skills were diverse: he was a painter, printmaker, critic, and theoretician. He taught at the Bauhaus for most of the famed school’s existence; initially head of the bookbinding department, he also supervised the glass-painting workshop. His greatest influence, however, was as a lecturer for the basic design course on the theory of form in art. In lectures, Klee developed his ideas about the "polyphony" of painting, which was based on his interest in simultaneous sensational effects that could be created by various layered formal elements. He believed that this type of creative experimentation could "issue forth a transformed beholder of art" and thus pave the way for total abstraction.