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.
Florence Henri was a real globetrotter of modernism. Born in New York in 1893, she lived in Munich, Paris, Rome and, finally, on the Isle of Wight in England. She attended the Bauhaus in Weimar and Dessau, where Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky taught. These periods abroad played a decisive role in shaping her artistic language.
More than 80 works, including drawings, paintings, photographs and collages, trace Henri’s artistic development: from the paintings of the 1920s created during her studies with Fernand Léger, through her experimental photography, to her return to abstract painting from the 1940s until her death.
Curators: Roberto Lacarbonara und Giovanni Battista Martini
The exhibition is organised by the Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern, and the Palazzo Ducale, Genoa, in collaboration with the Florence Henri Archive.
Fokus. Florence Henri (1893–1982)is part of the permanent exhibition Kosmos Klee. The Collection
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.
In the first half of the 20th century, the Brazilian artist Roberto Burle Marx (1909–1994) revolutionised landscape architecture by transferring compositional principles from painting and music to nature.
While his plans resemble abstract paintings, he integrated sculptures as well as three-dimensional and colourful wall surfaces into his landscape projects. In his paintings one encounters abstract plants and the play of light in the treetops. As a painter, graphic artist, sculptor, jewellery designer, stage and costume designer, environmental activist and collector, he participated – in the spirit of the Brazilian avant-garde – in the cultural appropriation and re-evaluation of what was considered ‘Brazilian’. In his parks, for example, he used native plant varieties, even though these were held to be inferior, and advocated for the study and protection of Brazilian flora.
Curator: Fabienne Eggelhöfer
Curatorial assistant: Myriam Dössegger
An exhibition organised and curated by the Zentrum Paul Klee and Fundación Juan March in partnership with the Instituto Burle Marx and the support from Sítio Burle Marx.
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.
