Paul Klee: Painting with Pattern to Create Rhythm, Structure, and Movement

Although patterns are everywhere in daily life, we don’t always associate them with fine art. Paul Klee masterfully used pattern to create rhythm, movement, and structure in his paintings. His geometric forms—squares, triangles, and circles—combine in intricate, often playful compositions. Like a musical beat, his repeating shapes guide the eye, creating a sense of harmony and flow.

Castle and Sun by Paul Klee, oil on canvas, 1928

In Castle and Sun (pictured above), Klee used geometric shapes to construct an abstract castle, reducing architecture to its essential forms. His use of color and pattern evoke a sense of mood and emotion, transforming simple shapes into a vibrant, almost dreamlike composition. The interplay of warm and cool tones, along with the rhythmic arrangement of forms, creates a dynamic yet harmonious scene.

Temple Gardens by Paul Klee, gouache on paper, 1920

In 1914, Klee spent two transformative weeks in Tunisia, a journey that reshaped his approach to painting. The region’s intense light and vibrant colors deeply affected him, inspiring a shift away from naturalism. Instead of using color to depict reality, he began to explore its expressive potential, treating it as an independent element within his compositions. This breakthrough led him further into abstraction, where color and form work together to evoke mood and rhythm.

Temple Gardens (pictured above) reflects the influence of Klee’s time in Tunisia. In this painting, he constructed stairs from simple stripes and domed towers from arch-like forms, creating a whimsical, dreamlike scene. Above the garden walls, stylized palm trees emerge, adding to the painting’s sense of place while maintaining his signature abstraction.

According to a blurb on The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s website:

Klee sometimes liked to rearrange his compositions with scissors. Perhaps in this instance (Temple Gardens), he thought the work looked too symmetrical and therefore cut it into three sections and moved the center one to the left. Now the site depicted in Temple Gardens, which earlier was only pleasantly full of the "angles and corners" he had admired in Kairouan, has become truly labyrinthine.

Colorful Architecture by Paul Klee, watercolor on paper, 1917

Colorful Architecture reflects Klee’s fascination with structure, rhythm, and the expressive power of color. Painted during World War I while he was working as a clerk in Gersthofen, Germany, the piece conveys a sense of order and playfulness despite the turbulent time in which it was created.

The curved moon-like shapes add a sense of softness and movement, contrasting with the rigid architectural elements. This contrast creates an intriguing balance between structure and fluidity, evoking the idea of an imagined cityscape infused with dreamlike qualities.

Flowering by Paul Klee, oil on canvas, 1934

Flowering is an example of one of Klee’s purely abstract paintings. According to HyperAllergic:

Klee’s major breakthrough in abstraction came when he discovered that he could “compose” a painting much like a piece of music by assigning emotive value to individual colors and arranging them into fields of rectangles.

Paul Klee’s innovative use of pattern, color, and geometric form transformed his paintings into compositions that feel both structured and spontaneous. Inspired by his travels to Tunisia, he moved beyond naturalism, using color and repetition to evoke rhythm, emotion, and movement. In works like Castle and Sun and Temple Gardens, he abstracted architecture into playful yet carefully arranged shapes. Klee’s work reveals the expressive potential of pattern—turning simple forms into intricate, dynamic worlds.

Klee inspired tutorial

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