The stone quarries at Ostermundigen and the former stone-dressing site at Waldeck (which today lies at the junction between Bernstrasse and Zentweg) were important locations for the work of Paul Klee in Bern’s surroundings. Their significance as a source of inspiration for his artistic work is considerable, comparable for instance with the old city centre of Bern, the Matte district and Lake Thun – or in a broader context the landscapes of northern Germany, Sardinia, Corsica and the south of France.

Thanks to his acquaintance with the building contractor Alfred Bürgi (the husband of Klee’s first collector, Hanni Bürgi-Bigler), whose company F. & A. Bürgi leased the Ostermundigen stone quarries, Paul Klee regularly had the opportunity to visit the quarries and to paint or sketch on site. Some twenty of his works feature the stone quarries or the stone-dressing site as a motif. Other sheets from Klee’s youth show the surroundings nearby or further afield, for instance the Ostermundigen woods, Boll, Gümligen and Muri.

The drawings Klee made in the quarries represent an important phase in the artist’s development and that of his drawing technique: The expressive, almost gestural line that would come to characterise Klee’s graphic work in later years first comes to the fore here. Each line in these drawings from 1909 and 1910 appears to be alive; the line as a form of movement, one of the key themes in the art of Paul Klee, begins to take shape here. A number of Klee’s works whose theme is inspired by the stone quarries show that they mark the transition from representational art to abstraction, a theme that is also of considerable didactic interest.