Paul Klee was born in Switzerland in 1879 as the son of a music teacher and a soprano.  At a young age he was a talented violinist.  Though he was very talented in music, he chose to rebel against his parents by entering visual arts, and studied  at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich in 1898.  He was talented at drawing, but noted on a trip to Italy that he would struggle with colour.  In 1912 he met the members of the Der Blaue Reiter and began to experiment with abstraction.  In 1914 he went to Tunisia and there discovered color, and started painting in watercolour.  He served in WWI, and created lithographs of his experiences.  In 1919 he applied to teach at Stuttgart, but failed.  In 1921 he taught at the Bauhaus where he taught for 10 years and joined the Die Blaue Vier in 1923.  In 1931 he taught at Düsseldorf Academy until 1933, when he was fired from his job by the Gestapo.  He moved back to Switzerland and died of a wasting disease in 1940.  Paul Klee started a diary in 1897, which he kept until 1918, and wrote various publications, lectures, and theories.  As an artist he was very prolific, with over 9000 works.