1879
Paul Klee is born in Münchenbuchsee near Bern on December 18 to the music teacher Hans Wilhelm Klee and the trained singer Ida Maria Klee, née Frick.
1898
He finishes his secondary education with a Matura. After wondering whether to become a musician or a painter he decides to go to Munich where he attends the private drawing school run by Heinrich Knirr.
1899
Klee meets the pianist Lily Stumpf (1876–1946) at a musical soirée.
1900
From the autumn of 1900, he also studies under Franz von Stuck at the Munich Academy.
1901/02
Klee and the Bern sculptor Hermann Haller leave for a six-month period of study in Italy. The overwhelming richness of Rome’s classical art plunges Klee into an artistic crisis.
1902–06
To find himself and to mature he withdraws at his parents’ home in Bern, where he makes his first paintings on glass and etchings.
1906
On September 15, he marries Lily Stumpf in Bern. Two weeks later, the couple moves to Munich.
1907
Felix, the son and only child of Paul and Lily Klee, is born on November 30.
1908
Exhibition at the Munich and Berlin Secession.
1910
First solo exhibition comprising fifty-six works at the Bern Kunstmuseum Bern, moving on to Zürich, Winterthur, and Basel.
1911
Klee beginnt mit der Illustration von Voltaires „Candide“.
First solo exhibition beyond Switzerland at the Thannhauser gallery in Munich.
1912
Taking part in the second Blauer Reiter (Blue Rider) exhibition in Munich with seventeen works.
In April, he travels to Paris and visits the artists Robert and Sonia Delaunay.
1913
Klee exhibits in Berlin at the First German Autumn Salon (Erster Deutscher Herbstsalon) in the gallery „Der Sturm“ of Herwarth Walden.
1914
Klee travels to Tunisia at Easter with his artist friends August Macke and Louis Moilliet. There he undergoes an artistic breakout to color and abstraction.
Klee belongs to the founder members of the „Neue Münchener Secession“.
1916
On March 11, he is drafted into the German army as a soldier. After his training in the infantry he is transferred to the maintenance company of the air corps in Schleissheim near Munich and afterwards to Gersthofen. In spite of his service at the army he continues his artistic work.
1916–18
He becomes a cult figure of the new artscene in Germany due to his exhibitions at the Berlin gallery „Der Sturm“.
1920
Klee’s artdealer Hans Goltz organizes a first retrospective in Munich with 362 artworks.
On October 29, Walter Gropius calls Klee to the Staatliches Bauhaus in Weimar.
1921
On May 13, Klee commences his academic teaching career at the Bauhaus and moves with his family from Munich to Weimar.
1923
The first exhibition in a German museum takes place in Berlin at the Nationalgalerie in the Kronprinzen-Palais.
1924
First solo exhibition in New York.
The artists group The Blue Four (Die Blaue Vier) with Wassily Kandinsky, Lyonel Feininger, Alexej Jawlensky and Paul Klee is founded by the artdealer Galka Scheyer.
1925
The Bauhaus moves to Dessau.
Participation of Klee at the first Surrealist exhibition „La peinture surréaliste“ in Paris together with Max Ernst, Joan Miró, Pablo Picasso and others.
1926
Klee and his familiy move to Dessau. There they live with Wassily and Nina Kandinsky in one of the three duplexes built by Gropius for Bauhaus master craftsmen.
1928
Trip to Egypt.
1929
To Klee’s fiftieth birthday several exhibitions take place such as in Berlin, Dresden, New York or Paris.
1931
Klee takes up a professorship at the Düsseldorf Academy on July 1.
1933
Klee is suspended from his position as a Professor by the National Socialists.
At the end of the year 1933 he emigrates to Switzerland initially living in his parental home in Bern.
1935
Klee falls ill, first with bronchitis followed by a pneumonia. In November the illness is diagnosted as measles. But actually it is a not detected scleroderma.
1936
Due to his poor health his output for the year is just twenty-five works – an all-time low.
1937
The National Socialists defame Klee’s art as „degenerated“ and seize 102 of his works in German museums. Fifteen of them are presented at the exhibition „Entartete Kunst“.
1939
Despite of his bad health the year 1939 with 1,253 registered works is Klee’s most productive year ever.
1940
On June 29 Paul Klee dies in Locarno-Muralto.