In Lugano a major exhibition on Paul Klee with drawings and engravings

From Sept. 4, 2022 to Jan. 8, 2023, MASI - Museo d’Arte della Svizzera Italiana in Lugano will exhibit an extraordinary collection of drawings and etchings by Paul Klee (Münchenbuchsee, 1879 - Muralto, 1940) from the Sylvie and Jorge Helft Collection. Shown for the first time as a whole in a museum setting, the Helft collection includes some 70 works including pencil and pen drawings, pastels, 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 work.

Drawing is never conceived by the artist as a preparatory stage for the creation of a painting, but as an autonomous work: in this sense, it is significant to consider that almost half of his vast output (comprising some 9,000 works) consists of drawings. A skilled and versatile draughtsman from his earliest days, Klee had a particular interest in the quality of line in prehistoric works of art and childlike drawings, whose spontaneity, authenticity and reduction of form he appreciated. The line is employed by him 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, bordering on sarcasm at times, but sometimes tinged with a more dramatic hue. Moreover, the line also occupies a key position in Klee’s theoretical writings and is a recurring element in his lectures at the Bauhaus in Weimar and Dessau, where he taught for ten years.

The exhibition is set up in an intimate space to allow a close dialogue between the works and reflect the privileged relationship that a private collection allows with them. The itinerary is divided into seven sections that explore recurring themes in Klee’s work and key moments in his artistic trajectory: the confrontation between nature and architecture, the human figure and the animal world, his teaching years at the Bauhaus, his relationship with the performing arts, and even touches on the theme of illness in relation to the production of his last period (1935-1940). A special section is devoted to vintage editions of books illustrated by Klee, exhibition catalogs, monographs and a rare complete copy of the Meistermappe des Staatlichen Bauhauses portfolio from 1923.

The exhibition itinerary

The first section of the exhibition is devoted to the relationship with nature, an important source of inspiration for the artist in the creative process: in fact, like nature, the artist gives life to his works thanks to a vital impulse that guides the succession of phases of genesis, growth and proliferation of the formal aspects that characterize the work itself. Klee draws and paints without having in mind a priori the subject or the scene he would like to represent, which, on the contrary, spring spontaneously by means of signs, until they assume forms that found similarities with elements present in reality, whether organic or inorganic.

In the next section devoted to the interwar period and the Bauhaus years, the work The Other Ghost Room (new version) from 1925 stands out. In this composition Klee skillfully combines the use of central perspective and a dechirican-inspired atmosphere, resulting in a vision that oscillates between Cubist and Metaphysical suggestions. Klee’s first work purchased by Jorge Helft in 1970, it holds a special place in the collection. It was exhibited in 1925 at the Galerie Vavin-Raspail in Paris, an occasion when Klee’s watercolors were presented to the French public for the first time.

The tour continues with two sections devoted to theexploration of the human figure and the animal world and the narrative suggestions that characterize many of the works in the exhibition. Klee’s figures are often concisely delineated, a few strokes suffice to suggest an expression or attitude. At the same time when several characters appear in his essential compositions, the artist always manages to establish a dynamic and intriguing relationship between them. A keen observer of human action, particularly interested in exploring social interactions in his work, Klee enjoyed creating scenes with dramatic and caricature connotations where it is often the animals themselves who adopt behaviors that serve as mirrors to human contradictions and virtues.

Klee’s solid musical training (son of music professor Hans Klee and singer Ida Frick and herself an excellent violinist) emerges both in the structure of his works and in his choice of subjects. Klee draws on characteristic types of musical writing such as variation, fugue, and polyphony to develop works marked by extreme formal harmony. In the section devoted to Klee’s relationship with the performing arts, several works reflect the artist’s great interest in theater and comic and circus characters, in which he identified metaphors for human behavior, sometimes traceable to personal experiences.

The last section of the exhibition is devoted to the works of the last period, which are characterized by the rapidity of the stroke, the reduction of forms and the use of an almost tactile materiality, rendered through the use of very thick starch glue colors, which makes his works look as if they were painted directly with his fingers, as happens in the verse of Stahl den viertel Mond. Despite being marked by illness, Klee’s last years constitute an extremely productive time. Presented here are works on which “death casts its shadow,” as recalled by Juan Manuel Bonet in his essay published in the catalog: the progression of an incurable disease was in fact progressively transforming the artist’s body, which is depicted literally “in pieces” in the 1939 drawing Unterbrochene Metamorphose.

A special section of the exhibition is devoted to vintage publications that the Helfts, passionate bibliophiles, have collected over the years. These are rare and valuable editions documenting the artistic and literary developments fostered by the avant-garde movements of the early 20th century. These include an exceptionally complete copy of the portfolio Meistermappe des Staatlichen Bauhauses, which contains, among others, a lithograph by Vasily Kandinsky and a constructivist composition by László Moholy-Nagy.

Also published on the occasion of the exhibition is the catalog Paul Klee. The Sylvie and Jorge Helft Collection available in Italian, English and German. In addition to color reproductions of all the works on display, the catalog includes an interview with the collectors conducted by Tobia Bezzola, director of MASI Lugano, and texts by Juan Manuel Bonet, Francisco Jarauta and Achim Moeller. For all info you can visit the MASI Lugano website.

Pictured: Paul Klee, Duel (1938; glue color on paper and cardboard; Private collection)

In Lugano a major exhibition on Paul Klee with drawings and engravings

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