Zentrum Paul Klee Bern Founded by Maurice E. and Martha Müller and the heirs of Paul Klee
Exhibitions 18/11/16—12/03/17

Paul Klee and the Surrealists

Last Days!

This is the first comprehensive exploration of Paul Klee’s relationship with Surrealist artists in Paris in the 1920s and 1930s. Created in close co-operation with the Centre Pompidou in Paris, it assembles a large number of works by Surrealists including Max Ernst, Joan Miró, Hans Arp, Alberto Giacometti, André Masson and Salvador Dalí.

This is the first exhibition to take a comprehensive look at the relationship between Paul Klee and the Surrealist artists in Paris in the 1920s and 1930s. For the very first Surrealists such as Max Ernst and Joan Miró, but also for writers such as Louis Aragon and Paul Éluard their meeting with Klee’s dreamlike interconnecting pictorial worlds was an artistic revelation. At the same time Klee drew inspiration from Surrealist ideas or models such as Giorgio de Chirico. Subjects such as the world as dream, surreal machines and apparatuses, imaginary plant worlds, mysterious portraits and masks, the secret of objects, unreal spaces and imaginary architectures shed light on their engagement with one another.

The exhibition is organised in close cooperation with the Centre Pompidou in Paris and brings a large number of masterpieces by Surrealist artists such as Max Ernst, Joan Miró, Hans Arp, Alberto Giacometti, André Masson, René Magritte, Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dalí from the most important museums in the world together with selected paintings by Klee.