Paul Klee Notebooks is a two-volume work by Paul Klee that collects his lectures at the Bauhaus schools in 1920s Germany and his other main essays on modern art. These works are considered so important for understanding modern art that they are compared to the importance that Leonardo’s A Treatise on Painting had for Renaissance; Herbert Read called the collection “the most complete presentation of the principles of design ever made by a modern artist – it constitutes the Principia Aesthetica of a new era of art, in which Klee occupies a position comparable to Newton’s in the realm of physics.”

The final work was edited by Swiss artist Jürg Spiller. In an earlier 1925 shorter book, Pedagogical Sketchbook, Klee published a condensation of his lectures at the Weimar Bauhaus. (from Wikipedia)

Volume 1

First published as Das bildnerische Denken, Schwabe & Co., Basel, 1956

Translated by Ralph Manheim

Edited by Jürg Spiller

Publisher Lund Humphries, London, 1961

541 pages

Volume 2

First published as Unendliche Naturgeschichte, Schwabe & Co., Basel, 1970

Translated by Heinz Norden

Edited by Jürg Spiller

Publisher Lund Humphries, London, 1973

454 pages

Volume 1: The Thinking Eye (42 MB, updated on 2019-12-25)

Volume 2: The Nature of Nature (49 MB, updated on 2019-12-25)

See also Klee’s class notes in manuscript (1921-31) and his Pedagogical Sketchbook (1925–).