Zentrum Paul Klee Bern Founded by Maurice E. and Martha Müller and the heirs of Paul Klee
Th 11.09.2008

Press release Paul Klee – Movement in the Workshop

​Opening of the exhibition

For an artist, the studio is the place where he can sit down and create. It is also somewhere to retreat to when he needs to reflect and contemplate. Paul Klee has used all sorts of places as his studios. This new exhibition Paul Klee – Movement in the Workshop at the Zentrum Paul Klee (13.9.2008 to 18.1.2009) provides an insight into these places, the paintings he did there, and the techniques he used at the time. The art workshops and special open studios presented by the Creaviva Children's Museum will give an insight into what it may have been like for the artist working away in his studio. The public opening will be on Friday, 12th September at 6 pm.

This exhibition enables visitors to experience Klee’s studios as venues where he worked and developed his ideas, as key locations of his intellectual and creative activity, and as dynamic microcosms for the artist. Here, life-sized photographs afford visitors an intimate insight. Besides these historic photographs, there are also originals of Klee's works on display. Closely linked with the theme of the studio is the artistic work process. Arranged in thematic groups of works, the exhibition sets out the formal processes that were characteristic of Klee. These include the «dynamic of the line», the cutting up of images, his oil transfer process and spraying techniques, and his predilection for multilayering and overlapping. The exhibition also looks at various aspects around conservation and restoration. A special room is devoted to the central theme, namely, Klee's use of colour – demonstrating the effortless ease with which he handled colour in all its dimensions and which he explored in all its facets, and the space contains a juxtaposition of blue and red works and the pigments he employed.

Art mediation

«With this exhibition, the Zentrum Paul Klee and the Children's Museum will be breaking new ground in the area of art mediation. It is most probably quite unique on the Swiss museum scene for a children's museum that is committed to creative, interactive art mediation to be «pitching its tent» in an exhibition in order to engage inactive and attractive art mediation with up to 25 people, and all in direct contact with the original creations on display. Our «special open studios» are being run by the Children's Museum each Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday (1–2pm and 3–4pm) in the exhibition under the slogan «Working as the artist does in his studio». The workshops are based on Paul Klee's «Pedagogical Sketchbook», where he analyses the elements of point, line, surface and space.