Paul Klee. A Collection Travelling Around the World

Oct 13, 2018 — Mar 10, 2019

  • Photo: Achim Kukulies

In 1960, the Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia acquired 88 paintings, watercolors, and drawings by Paul Klee. This purchase represented an act of atonement toward an artist who had been dismissed from his professorship at the Düsseldorf Art Academy by the National Socialists in 1933.

This ensemble of works, which forms the foundation of the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein- Westfalen, founded in 1961, is now the point of departure for a reexamination of its permanent collection: from 1966 until 1985, the Klee pictures travelled around the world and were seen in Jerusalem in 1966, in Prague in 1969, in Rio de Janeiro in 1972, and in New Delhi in 1979, among others. In the context of this tour, the “universal genius” Klee and his works were explicitly designated as message and messengers of the still young Federal Republic of Germany, as strikingly documented through previously unknown archival materials, along with documents from some of the host institutions.