BERN.- Often, in his painting and drawing, Paul Klee used both sides of his picture supports such as paper, cardboard or canvas. Over the many years of her research project, the curator Marie Kakinuma identified drawings, watercolours or paintings on the verso of 600 of a total of 9600 works by the artist. With reference to 19 examples, the presentation Fokus. Klee’s versos, within the permanent exhibition Kosmos Klee, reveals the variety of the recto and verso compositions within Klee’s oeuvre.

Fascinating origin stories of Klee’s works come to light. The examples shown testify to continuing working processes, reused materials or chance posthumous discoveries. Here the nature of the support plays a major part. In the case of non-transparent supports such as canvas or cardboard, in some instances the verso depictions have only been revealed by restoration or scientific examination.

On the verso of Klee’s Glass Façade (1940), the Kunstmuseum Bern uncovered a hitherto unknown representation as the result of restoration work in the 1990s. The Glass Façade is one of the major works from Klee’s late period, and one of the few large-format paintings from that time. For decades the verso of the work had been covered by a pinkish-brown overpainting which became brittle over time and flaked off. It has now been restored. On the verso we can see a figure with wings ending in points which recalls Klee’s angel paintings, as well as a girl standing on her head. On the stretcher Klee notes in pencil: ‘Girl dies and becomes’. It was only the ravage of time that exposed the hidden painting.

Klee did not explicitly define a recto and verso on all his two-sided works. In his lifetime, for example, Klee did not include Child and Kite or Flower and Snake (both around 1940) in his catalogue raisonné, even though both sides of the paintings have been fully worked.

Klee died shortly after the completion of the paintings. The depiction of the child with the envelope-like body and the paper kite, popular today, was only posthumously declared to be the recto by his son and executor Felix Klee. On the less well-known reverse there is a composition of red, blue and green coloured clouds on a structured white ground. A yellow flower and a delicate snaking line give the delicate side of the painting its title.

For Klee two-sided composition was also part of an open, continuing process. In the case of transparent supports such as thin paper, the versos sometimes show through, leaving faint traces on the recto that are barely visible to the naked eye. As a result the two sides of the painting merge seamlessly into a whole in terms of both form and content. Drawings on the verso that show through on the other side have been rendered more easily visible through infrared photography.

Klee deliberately used the working of the verso in around twenty of his characteristically reduced drawings from the last years of his artistic career. To make a background for his drawings, from delicate pink to purple, he mixed coloured paste with caput mortuum – an intensely coloured iron oxide – and painted the whole surface of the verso with that.

Curator: Marie Kakinuma