Paul Klee Making Visible Tate Modern London Review

04/12/2013

1,496 3 minutes read

Paul Klee: Making Visible
Tate Modern, London

16 October2013 – 9 March 2014

www.tate.org.uk

Reviewed by Christine Charlesworth

Tate Modern opened in 2000 and has become the most-visited modern art gallery in the world. Housed in the former Bankside Power Station,it has 7 floors of exhibition space dedicated to modern and contemporary art from 1900 up to the present day. Situated beside the Thames on The Queen’s Walk, South Bank, opposite St Paul’s Cathedral it is linked to the City of London via the well-known Millennium footbridge. Admission is free, except for the special exhibitions. There are free daily guided tours and special events for children. There is a large shop, a cafe and a restaurant with one of the best views in London.

Tate Modern is part of the Tate group of Art Galleries, linked to Tate Britain by a river boat which runs between the two galleries every 40 minutes. Tate Liverpool and Tate St Ives are the other members of the group.

On Wednesday 20 November 2013 I visited Tate Modern to see the ‘Paul Klee: Making Visible.’ This is the UK’s first large-scale Klee exhibition for over a decade, bringing together over 130 colourful drawings, watercolours and paintings from collections around the world. Klee completed over 10,000 diverse works of art in his lifetime and it is with great ingenuity that this exhibition has brought together these chosen works, showing them in such a way that the viewer leaves the exhibition feeling they know and understand the artist better and, therefore, wish to see more of his work.

Paul Klee was born in 1879 near Bern in Switzerland. His father was a German music teacher and his mother was a Swiss singer. Klee studied violin and music, and worked professionally as a musician, but Art was of equal importance and he wanted to be known as an artist. Although Klee was rejected by the Munich Academy of Fine Arts in 1898 he pursued his love of art and travelled to Italy and other parts of Europe, where he saw works by Picasso. On his return to Bonn he began extensive art studies and experimentation to develop his own artistic identity. He was determined to be an artist and was able to earn his keep during this time as an orchestral violinist and in fact continued to play in various chamber music groups throughout his life.

Klee struggled as an artist until he was 33 but after he joined the Blaue Reiter, (Munich’s modernist group) he met Wassily Kandinsky, who became a great influence on Klee’s work. These two friends and their families later shared a house at the Bauhaus, where Klee taught from 1921 until it was forced to close in 1931. He then taught at the Dusseldorf Academy, until he was dismissed by the Nazis in 1933 and had to take refuge in Bern. At this time many of his works were taken from collections by the Nazis and labelled ‘degenerate art’ with a large number being destroyed. In 1934 Klee first showed his work in London, followed by an exhibition in Edinburgh, but by mid 1935 he was diagnosed with scleroderma, an incurable degenerative illness that attacks the skin and finally the patient is unable to swallow solid food. Although Klee could not continue playing the violin, these were his most productive years as an artist and a major exhibition of 213 new works opened in Zurich in 1940. Unfortunately Klee was only able to visit briefly at the end of the exhibition before going to Locarno health resort, where he died.

The Paul Klee exhibition takes place in 17 linked galleries, giving great amounts of space to each small picture, sometimes displaying them on black walls to great effect and showing only 15 works in the largest gallery with no more than 5 in the smaller areas. This in an exhibition where the viewer can take time to absorb every detail without being jostled for position, as time is needed to fully appreciate the humour, detail and diversity of Klee’s work, which has many hidden delights.

This exhibition continues until 9 March 2014 and is definitely worth a visit.

Rating: 5/5