Paul Klee

 - Konstruktion des Geheimnisses

Paul Klee - Construction of Mystery

Paul Klee - Konstruktion des Geheimnisses
Pinakothek der Moderne, München, 28.02. –10.06.2018
Curator: Oliver Kase

With ‘Construction of Mystery’ the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen are about to dedicate their first ever major special exhibition to the work of Paul Klee, featuring around 150 works. The exhibition revolves around Klee’s productive years at the Bauhaus and the conflicts within modernism in the 1920s. The show presents Klee as a ‘thinking artist’ who systematically explores the boundaries of the rational in his work, and transcends them to approach the mysterious and enigmatic.

The 1920s, when Klee was one of the leading masters teaching at the Bauhaus, form the central focus of the exhibition. ‘Construction of Mystery’ traces the ways in which Klee productively responded to the new challenges of the mechanized, rationalized world and their impact on artistic creativity during his time in Weimar and Dessau. While the school’s directors Walter Gropius and Hannes Meyer promoted a close relationship between technology and art, Klee emphasized the importance of playfulness, intuition, and artistic genius. In a text entitled ‘Exact Experiments in the Realm of Art’, he went as far as calling for a ‘construction of mystery’ in art. The exhibition reveals the ways in which Klee dedicated himself to the paradoxical connection between reason and mystery in his own work.

During his time at the Bauhaus, Klee repeatedly returned to particular motifs, including mountains, constellations, ladders, and architectures, as well as concepts such as those of climbing or soaring. Based on Klee’s self-portraits, the exhibition traces these guiding principles and ideas throughout his entire oeuvre. The constant variations and developments of Klee’s pictorial world reveal the formal consistency and continuity of his artistic process.

Cooperation and Symposium

‘Paul Klee. Construction of Mystery’ runs parallel to ‘Paul Klee. Landscapes’, which will be on display in the Franz Marc Museum, Kochel am See (25 February – 10 June 2018). The dialogue between the two exhibits makes the full range of Klee’s work tangible, between abstraction and figuration, between his idea of ‘pictorial architecture’ and landscape. While the Munich exhibition places Klee’s work as a Bauhaus master in the 1920s and the urban challenges of modernism centre stage, Klee’s landscapes and images of nature displayed in Kochel lead visitors on journeys of the imagination.
https://www.artist-info.com/exhibition/Franz-Marc-Museum-Id379376

Source: Press Release