Paul Klee: Psychic Improvisation

David Zwirner is pleased to present Psychic Improvisation, an exhibition of work by Paul Klee, on view at the gallery’s 537 West 20th Street location in New York. Organized in collaboration with Alain and Doris Klee, with additional support from the Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern, this is the gallery’s third solo exhibition of the revered modernist’s work, following 1939, at David Zwirner New York in 2019, and Late Klee, at David Zwirner London in 2020. While those exhibitions focused on Klee’s work from the middle to late 1930s, this presentation explores his singular use of color and line, offering a concise yet instructive overview of the artist’s practice from the 1920s and 1930s.

In 1947, after the death of Paul Klee’s widow, four prominent collectors in Bern established the Paul Klee Foundation, which was housed in the Kunstmuseum Bern until 2004. On the occasion of a large donation of works from the Klee Family, the foundation was absorbed into a new museum dedicated to the artist. In 2005, the Zentrum Paul Klee opened as an independent institution and research center with a building designed by Renzo Piano. Klee’s work is in the permanent collections of countless major museums around the world.

Read more

Image: Paul Klee, ein Doppel-Schreier (A double screamer), 1939 (detail)

Location

537 West 20th Street New York New York, 10011

Dates

May 2—June 15, 2024

Opening Reception

Thursday, May 2, 6—8 PM

Gallery Hours

Tues—Sat 10am–6pm

Artist

Paul Klee

Press Release

Psychic Improvisation

Paul Klee in seinem Atelier, Bauhaus Weimar, 1923. © Klee-Nachlassverwaltung, Hinterkappelen. Photo by Felix Klee, courtesy Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern, Bildarchiv

A pioneering modernist of unrivaled creative output, Paul Klee (1879–1940) counts among the truly defining artists of the twentieth century, exploring and expanding the terrain of avant-garde art through work that ranges from stunning colorist grids to evocative graphic productions.

He was associated with some of the most important art movements of the twentieth century, including expressionism, cubism, and surrealism, yet his practice remained highly individualistic and distinct; it was never encapsulated by the concerns of a movement or reducible to the modernist binary of abstraction and figuration.

Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky, August 1929. Photo by Nina Kandinsky, courtesy Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern, Bildarchiv

Left to right: Josef Albers, Hinnerk Scheper, Georg Muche, László Moholy-Nagy, Herbert Bayer, Joost Schmidt, Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer, Wassily Kandinsky, and Paul Klee on the roof of the Bauhaus in Weimar, December 1926. © Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin

This exhibition features a range of key works that visualize the artist’s immense skill as a colorist and a draftsman. Several works from the early 1920s—around the time Klee began teaching as a “form master” at the newly founded Bauhaus—feature vibrantly colored grid-like fields whose appearances vacillate between landscape and pure abstraction.

Paul Klee

Friedhof (Cemetery), 1920

Oil and pen on linen

Framed: 13 5/8 x 16 3/4 inches (34.6 x 42.5 cm)