Are Paul Klee and Joan Miro's styles related in any way, considering they both use childlike forms of expression in their art?

Joan Miro was one of the earlier surrealists and created art that was based on fantastic imagery. The surrealist movement in art, which began in the early 1900's allowed many artists to delve in to subject matter that became quite personal in its imagery.

He had first started out in the Fauve style, which incorporated use of many bright and vivid colors in his work, then experimenting with the Dada movement and cubism, finally becoming influenced by the works of Klee and Kandinsky and Arp and other surrealists, who were working in these various modern styles.

It was at this point in his art that he used much more personal and fantastic images to portray his interpersonal visions. His early figurative paitings started to show his interest with a personal language and while he was linked with the surrealist style, he never fully enbraced thier tentents completely, prefering to find his own imagery and expresssion based on his own thoughts and feelings.

His purpose was to show and rediscover sources of human emotion and feeling and experiences, and depict these in a kind of poetry of painting, using them in a social means to conect with the masses. He developed a unique set of line type symbols and shapes and was know for his notion of 'Taking a line for a walk'.

Klee who had been a member of the Expressionist group Der Blaue Reiter, was also a teacher at the Bauhaus. His underlying direction always interwove use of color, and he was very much interested in colors effects in his paintings.

In the early 1920s he began to delve into the teachings of Freud’s and Jung’s and their theories on the subconscious. This area was becoming a great influence on the painters in the Surrealists movement. Like the others painting in that style, they spent a lot of time delving into personal styles that were reflective of individual thoughts. Klee was most fascinated with images provoked by poetry, music and dreams, and created his own use of Hieroglyphic type signs in his paintings as did Miro.

Both incorporated a use of bold and expressive lines to create this personal art-sign language and both used interpersonal imagery and fascination with thoughts , dreams, subconscious emotions and poetry to combine their art with the social world around them.
Neither can be completely described as having one style as both experimented and grew through the modern art styles that were emerging at the time. Both were greatly influenced by the various modern arts in their painting styles but more so by developing a personal approach with which to express their emotions, and social experience and thoughts, dreams etc in a personal fantastical story of lines, colors and space in a way that had not been done in classical works.

I hope this helps you to understand some of the two great modern artists of our time.
I would suggest you read more on each artist to really help comprehend a bit more of the time they lived in and the arts that were surrounding them at the time,

All the best

Robin Miltner
Art Education Director
Http://www.snca.org
Http://www.robinmiltner.com