Paul Klee. "Riesenblattlaus". Deutsche Graphiker der Gegenwart. Leipzig: Klinkhardt & Biermann, 1920
“But it is known to few that Paul Klee was more than a painter. His "communication with nature" produced much more than the transfiguration of the perceived form. It produced a philosophy that rested on empathy with the created world, accepting everything that is with equal love and humility. As a very young man he had spoken of his art as "andacht zum kleinen" (devotion to small things). In the Microcosm of his own visual world he worshipped the Macrocosm of the universe. This was his revolution. Academic art had been based since the Renaissance on the Aristotelian principle of de duction, meaning that all representation was deduced from the broad general principles of absolute beauty and conventional color canons. Paul Klee replaced deduction by induction. Through observation of the smallest manifestation of form and interrelationship, he could conclude about the magnitude of natural order. Energy and substance, that which moves and that which is moved, were of equal importance as symbols of creation. He loved the natural event; therefore he knew its meaning in the universal scheme. And with the instinct of the true lover he had to comprehend what he loved. The phenomenon perceived and analyzed, was investigated until its significance was beyond doubt. It is in Paul Klee that science and art fuse.”
Paul Klee. Pedagogical Sketchbook, introduction and translation by Sibyl Moholy-Nagy. New York: Praeger, 1960 (p. 5)