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.
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.
We thank the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart and the Fundación Gego, Caracas, Venezuela, for their collaboration.
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.
