Paul Klee: Creative Confession and Other Writings

Creative Confession brings together three short critical texts written by Paul Klee (1879–1940), one of the most distinctive artists of the early 20th century. Reflective and often lyrical, the essays exemplify Klee’s artistic thinking and his relationship with the creative process. Titled “Graphic Art” (published as “Creative Confession,” 1920), “Ways of Nature Study” (1923), and “Exact Experiments in the Realm of Art” (1928), the texts arch into each other through common and over­lapping concerns. The goal of these writings was to draw a wider public into a dialogue that Klee was already having with the world around him through his art. He said, “Art does not reproduce what is visible, instead it makes it visible,” and thus he talks readers through his own creative confessions. This compact new edition includes a postscript by Tate curator Matthew Gale.