BERN.- The dynamic permanent exhibition devoted to Paul Klee invites visitors to immerse themselves in the life and work of this important modern artist. With some 80 changing works from the collection, Kosmos Klee offers a chronological survey of Klee’s artistic career. Biographical and archival material provide an insight into his life and time. In addition, the ‘focus room’ offers a space for smaller exhibitions devoted to individual aspects of Klee’s work, or contributions to the artist’s global reception.

The collection

The Zentrum Paul Klee is the world’s most important centre for research into Paul Klee’s life and work, and has one of the most significant collections of the artist’s drawings, watercolours and paintings. Paul Klee was primarily a draughtsman, which is why 80% of the collection of the Zentrum Paul Klee consists of works on paper, matching the collected works. Because of the fragility of the works as well as the large size and diversity of the collection, only parts of it can be displayed at once. Klee enjoyed experimenting, not only in terms of content and form but also technically, using light-sensitive paints, inks and papers. For that reason the works need periods of rest between periods on display.

Kosmos Klee

With Kosmos Klee. The Collection the Zentrum Paul Klee offers visitors the opportunity to immerse themselves in Paul Klee’s life and work, as well as in the unique collection of the institution. Some 80 rotating and chronologically organised works provide an overview of Klee’s artistic development, from the highly detailed early works via tendencies towards abstraction and the discovery of colour, to the reduced pictorial language of the later work.

Each decade of Klee’s artistic career is identified by a colour in the exhibition, allowing visitors to find their way intuitively around the space. Brief introductory texts, biographical photographs and films give deeper insights into the different phases of the work and Paul Klee’s engagement with the people around him.

Aside from his works, the Zentrum Klee also preserves the artist’s archive. In the dynamic permanent exhibition, different treasures from the archive are presented, revealing the various aspects of Paul Klee’s life. His love of music is reflected in his record collection and the scores that Klee, a gifted violinist, played from. Klee’s favourite music can be heard as part of a podcast in the exhibition. Parts of the artist’s collection of natural materials, including shells, stones and pages from herbariums, display Klee’s close relationship with nature and natural processes. Other objects include his watercolour box, his schoolbooks, scribbled over with drawings, as well as letters.

Fokus

One part of some 100 m2 in area of the permanent exhibition is reserved for the series Fokus. Smaller exhibitions focus on particular aspects of Klee’s work, present works of artists with surprising references to Klee and follow the global Klee reception. The current presentation is dedicated to the journals of the Avant-Garde.

Unpacking Klee

Since June 2024, new episodes of the short film series Unpacking Klee are being released regularly and shown in the exhibition and on the Zentrum Paul Klee’s YouTube channel. 10 sequences guide the viewer through the depot of the Zentrum Paul Klee, which holds not only art works but also the world’s most comprehensive Paul Klee archive. It includes diaries, passports, the correspondence, photographs, musical notes, records, a violin and a grand piano, a collection of natural materials, books, studio utensils and more.

Behind the scenes treasures are unpacked to show what the objects tell us about Paul Klee’s life and work.

1.Shells
2. Paul Klee’s passports
3. Studio utensils for the coloured paste technique
4. Hand puppets
5. Children’s drawings
6. Catalogues of the artist’s oeuvre
7. Studio utensils for the spraying technique
8. Photographs of cats
9. Music
10. Schoolbooks

Digital Guide

The exhibition is accompanied by a digital guide offering thematic tours of the exhibition with changing emphases, a biographical overview and a study of historical and historico-cultural events and themes that were important to Klee’s work.

Digitorial® on Paul Klee’s travels

The Digitorial® presents five of Paul Klee’s most important journeys and illustrates his artistic development from bewildered student to one of the most important artists of the modern period. The five chapters are dedicated to the artist’s first journey to Italy in 1901, his 1912 journey to Paris where he visited Robert Delauney, among others, the now legendary study tour to Tunisia with Louis Moilliet and August Macke, one of Klee’s trips to the south to recover from his teaching activity at the Bauhaus, and the 1928 journey to
Egypt that was made possible by the Klee Society.