Monday 18 December 2017

December 18, Happy Birh day, Paul Klee

Paul Klee was a prolific Swiss and German artist best known for his large body of work, influenced by cubism, expressionism and surrealism.

Paul Klee was born in Münchenbuchsee, Switzerland, on December 18, 1879. Klee participated in and was influenced by a range of artistic movements, including surrealism, cubism and expressionism. He taught art in Germany until 1933, when the National Socialists declared his work indecent. The Klee family fled to Switzerland, where Paul Klee died on June 29, 1940.
 
Paul Klee - image Wikipedia

Early Life

Paul Klee was born in Münchenbuchsee, Switzerland, on December 18, 1879. The son of a music teacher, Klee was a talented violinist, receiving an invitation to play with the Bern Music Association at age 11.
As a teenager, Klee’s attention turned from music to the visual arts. In 1898, he began studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. By 1905, he had developed signature techniques, including drawing with a needle on a blackened pane of glass. Between 1903 and 1905, he completed a set of etchings called Inventions that would be his first exhibited works.




Rise to Prominence

In 1906, Klee married Bavarian pianist Lily Stumpf. The couple had a son, Felix Paul. Klee’s artwork progressed slowly for the next five years. In 1910, he had his first solo exhibition in Bern, which subsequently traveled to three Swiss cities.

In January 1911, Klee met art critic Alfred Kubin, who introduced him to artists and critics. That winter, Klee joined the editorial team of the journal Der Blaue Reiter, co-founded by Franz Marc and Wassily Kandinsky. He began working on color experiments in watercolors and landscapes, including the painting In the Quarry.

Klee’s artistic breakthrough came in 1914, after a trip to Tunisia. Inspired by the light in Tunis, Klee began to delve into abstract art. Returning to Munich, Klee painted his first pure abstract, In the Style of Kairouan, composed of colored rectangles and circles.

Klee’s work evolved during World War I, particularly following the deaths of his friends Auguste Macke and Franz Marc. Klee created several pen-and-ink lithographs, including Death for the Idea, in reaction to this loss. In 1916, he joined the German army, painting camouflage on airplanes and working as a clerk.



By 1917, art critics began to classify Klee as one of the best young German artists. A three-year contract with dealer Hans Goltz brought exposure as well as commercial success.
Klee taught at the Bauhaus from 1921 to 1931, alongside his friend Kandinsky. In 1923, Kandinsky and Klee formed the Blue Four with two other artists, Alexej von Jawlensky and Lyonel Feininger, and toured the United States to lecture and exhibit work. Klee had his first exhibits in Paris around this time, finding favor with the French surrealists.

Klee began teaching at Dusseldorf Academy in 1931. Two years later, he was fired under Nazi rule. The Klee family moved to Switzerland in late 1933. Klee was at the peak of his creative output during this tumultuous period. He produced nearly 500 works in a single year and created Ad Parnassum, widely considered to be his masterpiece.

( copy right www.biography.com )

Hinge

Roshan Chhabria, Jagganath, Priyasri Patodia, Lokesh Khodke and Shruti Ramalingaiah
The ever growing things around us amount to occupy our lives. Objects, commodity, machine, article, gadget, setup, accessory, belonging, instrument, setting, material- terms to define today’s social life accumulate, excess, correlate. They govern over our lives. These profusions embody in subjectivities and individual’s environment- yet, connects between objects and human.

Machines are everywhere, these days but, less visible. They don’t come predominant in size- a compact and smooth surface. They are evolving and overlapping. Complex like all other tools. Mishap might distract or collapse the apparatus; yet, they continue to pivot on stories to hover in our lives.

The exhibition stresses on the feature of hinge. Quite literally a minuscule part of machine or tool- rather, an anchor to unleash a cause for argument and condition. Dialectically, a transforming factor of a situation, twist in a moment, a character or fulcrum of a play, key that actuates to re-surface between physical lived spaces. Dynamics this mechanism has; in objects of our everyday to how we navigate and how we perform ritual, intact setting as well as temporal. An agency cannot go overlooked. The hinge, can be a thing as well a method allowing oscillation between things: to derive possibilities and probe a stereotype, belief, ideal and real, reality and truth.


The exhibition titled Hinge gather four artists- Digbijayee Khatua, Diptej Vernekar, Lokesh Khodke and Roshan Chabbaria whose practice and approaches they have adopted responds to pivot off at varied ends between social context and personal spaces in their representation. The works in this exhibition challenge manifold values, obvious unrest that align narratives of momentary deposits.

The exhibition is curated by Shruti Ramlingaiah, an independent Curator based in Mumbai. Her curatorial interest lies at culture in social context, material culture and spaces. She has written text for three-artists show- Lay in midst of Local, Gallery OED (2016) and an essay to ARTIndia magazine in 2017. In recent, she has facilitated group-show titled Again and yet Again at the Gallery OED (2017). She was curator for the second edition of Students’ Biennale an initiative of Kochi Biennale Foundation, 2016-2017. She studied Museology from MS University, Baroda; holds a Master’s degree in Art History and Visual Studies, Hyderabad University.


Hinge

Curated by
Shruti Ramlingaiah



Digbijayee Khatua  |   Diptej Vernekar   |   Lokesh Khodke   |   Roshan Chhabria
Exhibition from: 16th December, 2017 - 11th January, 2018

11:30 am – 7:00 pm Venue: Priyasri Art Gallery, 42 Madhuli 4th Floor, Shiv Sagar Estate,

Next To Poonam Chamber, Worli, Mumbai 400018