The Zentrum Paul Klee – the landscape sculpture by Italian architect Renzo Piano – goes beyond the scope of the traditional art museum. Temporary exhibitions, guided tours and events that include concerts, theatre, readings and workshops at the Kindermuseum Creaviva underscore the appeal of the world’s most important collection of works by Paul Klee.
As a conference centre the Zentrum Paul Klee boasts the ideal infrastructure.
The permanent exhibition offers visitors a chronological overview of Klee's artistic oeuvre and presents around seventy works as well as biographical material and archive items, which are changed regularly.
As one of the most important artists of modernism, Paul Klee (1879–1940) sought new forms of expression that did justice to the social and cultural upheavals of his time. He questioned everything that was taught in Europe and orientated himself towards children's drawings and non-European cultures as well as the structures and processes of nature. He also explored artistic movements such as Expressionism, Cubism, Dadaism, Surrealism and Constructivism without joining any of these groups. Klee commented on political events with ironic detachment in numerous works. The First and Second World Wars had far-reaching consequences for Klee's life. His networks broke up and led to the artist's isolation.
In the ‘Fokus Room’ we organize small exhibitions with a thematic focus on particular aspects of Paul Klee's work as well as with artists and topics with surprsing references to Klee's œuvre.
To coincide with its 20-year anniversary, the Zentrum Paul Klee is devoting a major exhibition to the Swiss-French artist-architect Le Corbusier (1887–1965). The exhibition focuses on the working process of the Swiss-French artist-architect, designer and urban planner, and places Le Corbusier’s three-dimensional thought centre-stage. It offers a comprehensive overview of his entire output from an artistic perspective, and includes both iconic items and groups of works that have so far remained largely unknown.
Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, world famous under the pseudonym Le Corbusier, is one of the most important guiding lights of modern architecture in Switzerland. He was also among the most prominent and globally influential protagonists of international modernism. Le Corbusier shaped modern architecture with enormous energy, radical visions and provocative rhetoric. In his work he set out to design living and urban spaces in a new way. His approach combined art, design and architecture.
Curator: Martin Waldmeier
Paul Klee is distinguished by his twin talents as an artist and a musician. As a young man already, he played the violin in the city orchestra, and it was difficult for him to make the decision between music and art.
He chose visual art because in that field he saw more opportunities to create something completely new. In his works he transposed musical aspects such as rhythm, melody and polyphony into art, and also taught this at the Bauhaus. Even today many pieces are composed on the basis of his works. The Fokus exhibition addresses this cross-fertilisation.
Curators: Fabienne Eggelhöfer and Marianne Keller Tschirren
Fokus. The Musical Klee is part of the permanent exhibition Kosmos Klee.
The permanent exhibition Kosmos Klee. The Collection offers visitors a chronological overview of Klee's artistic oeuvre and presents around seventy works as well as biographical material and archive items, which are regularly changed. Smaller focus exhibitions with a thematic reference to Paul Klee and his work are shown in one room at a time.
Why do so many – hundreds, if not thousands of – books of twentieth century philosophy, psychotherapy or critical theory feature the art of Paul Klee on their covers? Cover Star Klee draws a portrait of the artist as a prophet of analogue meme culture, which invites us to judge a book by its cover.
Curator: Dieter Roelstraete
Fokus. Cover Star Klee is part of the permanent exhibition Kosmos Klee.
The permanent exhibition Kosmos Klee. The Collection offers visitors a chronological overview of Klee's artistic oeuvre and presents around seventy works as well as biographical material and archive items, which are regularly changed.
Smaller focus exhibitions with a thematic reference to Paul Klee and his work are shown in one room at a time.
Rose Wylie. Flick and Float presents the nonconformist and fascinating work of the British artist Rose Wylie (b. 1934). She has won global recognition with her unique artistic practice and wide range of themes. Wylie’s large-format paintings are a mixture of figurative representation, abstraction and stories in pictures. Expressive, direct and filled with subversive humour, they bear witness to the artist’s engagement with pop culture, literature, history and personal experiences.
ngagement with pop culture, literature, history and personal experiences. Wylie’s artistic language is deliberately simple, and recalls the aesthetic of ‘Bad Painting’ and Post-Pop. With works from the last thirty years, the exhibition provides an insight into the untamed œuvre of an artist who overcomes conventional boundaries and occupies a unique place in the contemporary art scene. Individual works are also being painted specially for the exhibition in Bern, and shown to the public for the first time.
Curators: Fabienne Eggelhöfer
Gego (Gertrud Goldschmidt, 1912 in Hamburg–1994 in Caracas, Venezuela) was a German-Venezuelan artist and pioneer of abstraction in Latin America. She is known among other things for her drawings and her filigree, net-like sculptures and installations, which she called Reticuláreas – abstract drawings in space.
Gego, born Gertrud Louise Goldschmidt, studied architecture and engineering in Stuttgart during the Nazi period, and was strongly influenced by the ideas of the Bauhaus and modern architecture. Shortly after graduation she had to flee Germany because of her Jewish origins, and emigrated to Venezuela, where she devoted herself to art and teaching. The exhibition in the Zentrum Paul Klee is Gego’s first solo exhibition in Switzerland, and shows drawings, watercolours, prints and selected sculptures by the artist.
Curator: Martin Waldmeier
Fokus. Gego (Gertrud Goldschmidt) is part of the permanent exhibition Kosmos Klee.
The permanent exhibition Kosmos Klee. The Collection offers visitors a chronological overview of Klee's artistic oeuvre and presents around seventy works as well as biographical material and archive items, which are regularly changed.
Smaller focus exhibitions with a thematic reference to Paul Klee and his work are shown in one room at a time.
Anni Albers (1899–1994) is one of the most important figures in the art and design of the 20th century. Her creative and experimental career began in the 1920s in the Bauhaus, where she took lessons with Paul Klee.
She emigrated to the USA in 1933, establishing herself there as a weaver, textile designer and visual artist. Aside from her painterly woven works, which can be seen as autonomous art works, Albers devoted herself to the development of new textiles for buildings and interior spaces, so-called ‘utility objects’. She viewed weaving as the most progressive form of modern architectural thought. The exhibition focuses on the connection between textile and architecture, between weaving and building. With her deep understanding of material and its applications, Albers’s work is highly contemporary and relevant given present-day challenges in terms of energy and material resources. It is here that we can see her great significance both as a designer, theorist and innovator in the field of textiles and as a unique artist.
Curators: Fabienne Eggelhöfer and Brenda Danilowitz
The exhibition is a cooperation between the Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern, and the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, Bethany CT, in collaboration with ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum.
