Press Release Zentrum Paul Klee January 25 2011 Bern
To the Editorial Departments Zentrum Paul Klee Kommunikation und Kunstvermittlung Monument im Fruchtland 3 Postfach, CH-3000 Bern 31 T +41 (0)31 359 01 01 F +41 (0)31 359 01 02 [email protected] Opening www.zpk.org Paul Klee - Franz Marc. Dialogue in pictures An exhibition on a touching friendship of artists. Two personally and artistically different temperaments.
«When I tell you who Franz Marc is, then I must simultaneously recognise who I am, since much of what I take part in also belongs to him. He is more humane, he loves warmth, explicitly.» Paul Klee, Diary IV, 1916
The friendship between Paul Klee and Franz Marc, one of the founders of the «Blue Rider», is regarded as the most touching and enduring artistic relationship in the history of art in the 20 th century. The first meeting between the two painters in early 1912 is the start of a friendship, which linked personally and artistically the two fundamentally different temperaments until the tragic wartime death of Franz Marc near Verdun in 1916. The combination of the two names awakens many associations, thoughts about an art linked to the circle of the «Blue Rider», but also notions of profound agreement between the painters, who stood up against conventions and traditions in order to find a new path of their own.
What connected the two friends: the independent, analytical thinker Paul Klee and the religiously inspired utopian Franz Marc? What linked Klee - who converted the kitchen of his Schwabing apartment into a studio and looked after their son, while his wife earned their upkeep giving piano lessons --- to the civilisation-weary Marc, whose withdrawal to the country he shared not only with familiar animals but now and then with two lovers?
The exhibition How did this friendship begin, how did it develop and what did it mean to the two artists? The exhibition Paul Klee – Franz Marc: Dialogue in pictures poses these questions. It unites for the first time more than 100 works of the two artists, including a large number of masterpieces from famous museums in Germany and Switzerland.
The exhibition was created in close collaboration with the Franz Marc Museum in Kochel and the Moritzburg Foundation in Halle and presents this richly-facetted dialogue structured into themes, and examines the most important components: the illustrated letters and postcards, projects planned together such as the Bible illustrations or the Candide drawings by Paul Klee, as well as a series of important aquarelles created in the process of analysing the colour theories of Robert Delaunay.
The climax of the exhibition presents, alongside the illustrated postcards, the animal pictures by Franz Marc, the modern animal painter par excellence. Like no other artist he used the techniques of modern painting to approach
the «soul» of the animals and the utopia of a paradisian world. Horses, deer, sheep, bulls become models of originality and purity in Marc’s expressive, colourful painting.
For more information please contact: --- Maria-Teresa Cano, Head of Communication and Art mediation, [email protected] , Tel. +41 (0)31 359 01 01
Paul Klee - Franz Marc. Dialogue in pictures at the Zentrum Paul Klee
Preview: Wednesday, 26th January 2011, 18 hours
Exhibition: 27.1. - 1.5.2011
Curators: Cathrin Klingsöhr-Leroy, Franz Marc Museum Katja Schneider, Wolfgang Büche, Stiftung Moritzburg Michael Baumgartner, Zentrum Paul Klee
Entrance: CHF 18/16/8
Opening hours: Tuesday-Sunday, 10-17 hours
Further information www.zpk.org
Exhibition catalogue Edited by Michael Baumgartner, Cathrin Klingsöhr-Leroy and Katja Schneider Illustrated letters and postcards, works which the artists gave each other or exchanged and projects which the artists planned together. With essays by Michael Baumgartner, Andreas Hüneke, Cathrin Klingsöhr-Leroy, Peter-Klaus Schuster, Gregor Wedekind and a chronology of the friendship by Beate Ofczarek and Stefan Frey. Paper bound Museum edition, 255 pages, with numerous coloured reproductions. CHF 45.-
Interactive exhibition «Invent a world» Kindermuseum Creaviva Preview: Wednesday, 26th January 2011, 10 hours
Entrance: Free
Opening hours: Tuesday-Sunday, 10-17 hours
Paul Klee - Franz Marc: Dialogue in pictures
The illustrated postcards The idea behind this exhibition is to show the magically illustrated postcards Paul Klee and Franz Marc exchanged between 1912 and 1916 in their entirety for the first time. They document the meetings of the two artists, their everyday activities, pleasures and cares in Munich, Sindelsdorf and elsewhere. They illustrate how greatly the two artists esteemed one another and the interest they showed in each other’s work. The illustrated postcards by Franz Marc are miniature masterpieces, exquisite, reminiscent of Japanese ink or enamel paintings. Klee’s replies however were characterised by daring experimental pen-and-ink drawings, always with an ironical implication.
A feast of colours In the course of 1912 Paul Klee and Franz Marc became acquainted with Robert Delaunay in Paris. They reacted to the theories as well as to the works of the ‘‘orphist’’ very differently, inspiring them at a point in time when Klee and Marc had begun to find their way toward artistic abstraction. In concrete terms this influence is expressed through a magnificent series of paintings in Marc’s oeuvre, the Compositions I to IV. In Klee’s works this influence results in a series of intensely coloured aquarelles. In these, Klee’s renowned statement finds its impressive realisation: «Colour has me. I no longer need to chase it ».
The dream of the animals Franz Marc is the modern animal painter without equal. Like no other artist of his generation he was able to use the techniques of modern art to approach the «souls» of the animals and the utopia of a paradisian world. «He bows before animals with human respect», was Paul Klee’s description of his friend’s talent for depicting artistically the wonder of the animals intrinsic nature, inwardly at peace with itself. Horses, deer, sheep, bulls become models of originality and purity in Marc’s expressive, colourful painting. Paul Klee’s attitude to the animal world is more distant: «I am searching here for a more remote, creatively original point of view, from which I can discern a kind of formula for animals, plants, humans, the world, fire, water, air and all forces circling together.» In the exhibition, the different attitudes of the two artists - particularly in their depiction of horses - can be understood.
The theme of Christianity and premonition of war. Within the groups of work clearly demonstrating the fundamental difference in the artistic approach of Marc and Klee when analysing the same themes and motifs, is the theme of Christianity. This subject matter in the works of Klee and Marc before the First World War is at the same time over-shadowed by the premonition of war. While Franz Marc in his pantheistic religiosity saw the biblical genesis as the model for the creation of the animals, and in his radical criticism of civilisation welcomed the outbreak of war as a cleansing storm, Klee remained at a distance and sceptical of the content of the Christian religion. The same is true of his attitude to the war, which in contrast to the widely spread enthusiasm, he rejected from the beginning.
Paul Klee’s Candide drawings Klee’s reflective attitude is also mirrored in his series of illustrations to Voltaire’s Candide, whose satirical scepticism towards every kind of imaginary salvation became a philosophical model for Klee. Franz Marc was impressed by Klee’s unconventional style of drawing and supported the publication of the illustrations in a new edition of Candide; but the favour for his friend remained unfulfilled during his lifetime: The drawings in the Kurt Wolff edition were not published until 1920, four years after Franz Marc’s death.