By the early 1970s the Paul-Klee-Stiftung [Paul Klee Foundation] was able to shift some of its focus away from conservation work; within a few years it developed into a unique centre of competence and information for all matters relating to Paul Klee. In keeping with the Foundation’s second mission (namely “to establish in Switzerland a facility accessible to serious scientific research”) it set up an archive of artists, a specialist library and a documentation of works.

The new orientation coincided with the appointment of Jürgen Glaesemer in 1971: as the Foundation’s first official custodian he shaped the activities of the Paul-Klee-Stiftung until his untimely death in 1988. His decisions included setting up a detailed documentation of works and the publication of the collection’s assets, thereby laying the foundations for the subsequent Catalogue raisonné Paul Klee.

The Paul-Klee-Stiftung was greatly influenced by Jürgen Glaesemer during those years. As a representative of a younger generation of art historians he also wrote the first new overview of works by Paul Klee since the 1950s, i.e. the Foundation’s collection catalogue. With what was then an unconventional approach to Paul Klee he paved the way for a broader understanding of the artist, one that embraced both Klee’s theoretical work and his relationship with the realities and the art of his day. He revealed Paul Klee as a complex personality, releasing him from the then popular image of him as a “harmless story teller”.

The documentation of works, the archive and the library were made possible to a large extent by the close co-operation with Klee’s son Felix. Felix Klee, a member of the Board since 1953 and its Chairman since 1963, handed over reproductions from his own photo archive to the Paul-Klee-Stiftung as well as books on Paul Klee from his specialist library. Felix Klee’s son Alexander Klee later added to these donations with important parts of the written estate of Paul and Lily Klee.