PAUL KLEE – 1939
2019-10-07The exhibition focuses on Klee’s art from 1939, the year before he passed away, which marked one of the artist’s most prolific periods. Toward the end of 1933, in response to the suppression of avant-garde art practices by the newly empowered Nazi party, Klee left Germany, where he had primarily lived since 1906, and returned to his native city of Bern, Switzerland, residing there for the remainder of his life. From 1935 until his death in 1940, Klee continually struggled with illness, which at times impacted his ability to make art. Yet, in 1939, against the backdrop of immense sociopolitical turmoil and the outbreak of war, Klee worked with a vigor and inventiveness that rivaled even the most productive periods of his youth.
As Matthias Bärmann notes, “Klee seems to have derived a paradoxical vitality from the conscious, profound process of coming to terms with disease and the approach of death, a vitality that significantly transformed his art,” adding that: “Out of the physical and emotional suffering of his exile he took his art through a final metamorphosis, achieved one last pinnacle. Like only Matisse and Picasso among modern artists, Klee created a late work of singular rank.”
Opposite – es wurmt ihn (It Annoys Him), 1938
Exhibition runs through to October 26th, 2019
David Zwirner
537 West 20th Street
NY 10011
New York
