Klee’s “Insula Dulcamara” (1938)

Paul Klee on intuition in art

According to Paul Klee, the technique of the brush stroke is a great deal, but the crucial factor in painting is intuition. “We construct and construct,” Klee wrote in a Bauhaus prospectus, “and yet intuition is still a good thing. A considerable amount can be done without it, but not all. There is plenty of room for exact research in art, but there is no substitute for intuition.”

“Art unwittingly plays a game with the ultimate realities, but nevertheless arrives at them… The formal cosmos so closely resembles the Creation that a mere breath is sufficient to bring to life the expression of religious experience and of religion itself.”

From Paul Klee, by Will Grohmann (Collins: Fontana Pocket Libary of Great Art, Amsterdam, 1958).