At MASI in Lugano, an exhibition brings together important collection of drawings and etchings by Paul Klee

From September 4, 2022 to January 8, 2023, the Museo d’Arte della Svizzera italiana - MASI in Lugano presents the exhibition Paul Klee. The Sylvie and Jorge Helft Collection. The collection comprising drawings and etchings by Paul Klee (Münchenbuchsee, 1879 - Muralto, 1940) will be exhibited as a whole for the first time in a museum setting.

It is a collection of about seventy works including pencil, pen and pastel drawings, watercolors, etchings and lithographs, covering a broad span of the artist’s output from 1914 until his death. Patiently assembled over time since the 1970s, this nucleus of works highlights the strength and importance of drawing, and particularly line, in Klee’s art.

In fact, almost half of the artist’s vast output, comprising some 9,000 works, consists of drawings. A skilled and versatile draughtsman from his earliest days, Klee found in line a tool that enabled him to achieve the spontaneity, authenticity and reduction of form that he so appreciated in prehistoric artworks and childlike drawings. States of mind, atmospheres and situations, real and imaginary characters; the world of the circus, plants and animals, theater and of course music, even premonitions of death and illness: in the works on display, line is capable of touching the entire mystical and fairy-tale realm of Klee’s invention.

In his works he employs the line in all possible forms: as a straight line, zig-zag, vertical, horizontal, to draw circumferences, arrows, numbers, letters, signs and symbols, creating graphic works with an often ironic and humorous connotation, sometimes bordering on sarcasm, but sometimes tinged with a deeply tragic and dramatic undertone.

For more info: masilugano.ch

Image: Paul Klee, Duel (1938; glue color on paper on cardboard; private collection) © Nicolas Borel

At MASI in Lugano, an exhibition brings together important collection of drawings and etchings by Paul Klee

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