"Klee and America" is an exhibition catalogue produced by The Menil Collection, Houston. The book documents the first large-scale exhibition of Klee's work in the United States in almost two decades.

Paul Klee's influence on a wide range of American artists is explored in-depth in this stunning book. Critics have traditionally confined Paul Klee's contribution to American art as one of "spirit," and limited to the works of the New York School and other Abstract Expressionist painters. In fact, Klee's influence on American art is more expansive, as illustrated in this study of ten artists who, through their use of automatic drawing, color field painting, symbols, and pictographs, reveal how Klee's theories and artistic methods contributed to the history of post-war American art. The ten artists explored include familiar names, such as Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, Mark Tobey, Gene Davis, and Kenneth Noland, as well as lesser-known artists William Baziotes, Norman Lewis, Theodore Stamos, and Bradley Walker Tomlin. The richly-illustrated book features essays exploring Klee's legacy among various schools of American art and a chronology illustrates where and how American artists learned about Klee. It also includes a profile of each artist and their connections to Klee, followed by exquisite reproductions of their works.

This publication presents an impressive selection of Klee's finest "American" works furing the 1930's and 40's including both paintings and drawings.

Critics have traditionally confined Paul Klee's contribution to American art as one of "spirit," and limited to the works of the New York School and other Abstract Expressionist painters. In fact, Klee's influence on American art is more expansive, as illustrated in this study of ten artists who, through their use of automatic drawing, color field painting, symbols, and pictographs, reveal how Klee's theories and artistic methods contributed to the history of post-war American art. The ten artists explored include familiar names, such as Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, Mark Tobey, Gene Davis, and Kenneth Noland, as well as lesser-known artists William Baziotes, Norman Lewis, Theodore Stamos, and Bradley Walker Tomlin. The richly-illustrated book features essays exploring Klee's legacy among various schools of American art and a chronology illustrates where and how American artists learned about Klee. It also includes a profile of each artist and their connections to Klee, followed by exquisite reproductions of their works.

Modern Art on Display: The Legacies of Six Collectors is structured as a sequence of case studies that pair collectors of modern art with artists they particularly favored: Duncan Phillips and Augustus Vincent Tack; Albert Barnes and Chaim Soutine; Albert Eugene Gallatin and Juan Gris; Lillie Bliss and Paul Cézanne; Etta Cone and Henri Matisse; G. David Thompson and Paul Klee. The case studies are linked by a thematic focus on the integral relationship between the collectors’ acquired knowledge about the work they amassed and their innovative display models. This focus brings a new perspective to the history of collecting and interpreting modern art in America for nearly half a century (1915-1960). By examining the books the collectors themselves read and analyzing archival photographs of their displays, the author makes a case for the historical significance of how the collectors presented the art they acquired before their collections were institutionalized.

"The German painter Paul Klee (1879-1940) has become one of today's most popular artists. Ninety works by Klee--including drawings, watercolors, and oils, either serious, comical, capricious, or dramatic--have recently been given to the Metropolitan Museum of Art by one of the postwar era's leading art dealers and collectors, Heinz Berggruen, and are now published together in this volume for the first time. The works in the distinguished Berggruen Klee Collection, now a permanent part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's holdings, span the career of the artist from his student days in Bern in the 1890s to his death in Muralto-Locarno in 1940. All aspects of Klee both as a draftsman and as a painter are illustrated in these ninety works. Paul Klee is not only one of today's most popular artists, but he is also one of the most written about. In an illuminating addition to the vast literature on Klee, Sabine Rewald opens this study with a candid interview with the artist's only son, Felix, which took place in Bern in February 1986. Accompanied by documentary and informal photographs of the Klee family, it gives pointed and witty insights into the artist's private life. It also offers a behind-the-scenes view of the Bauhaus, where Paul Klee taught and where Felix Klee was a student. Most of the ninety works in the Berggruen Klee Collection are reproduced in full-page colorplates, and each one is accompanied by an extensive entry. These entries incorporate biographical information and quotations from Klee's letters, the latter as yet unpublished in English. The book includes an extensive chronology and a bibliography." -- Provided by publisher