Paul Klee Draughtsman, 1921-1933. Works from the Bauhaus Period

A selection of drawings made by artist Paul Klee during his Bauhaus years, 1921-1933. The show reveals Klee's admiration for Picasso and how the works by Cubist painters stimulated his own pictorial research.

This show dedicated to Paul Klee's facet as a draughtsman is a clear example of the cultural exchange between two cities, Berne and Barcelona, and between two museums, the Kunstmuseum Berne and Museu Piccasso in the Catalan capital.

Paul Klee and Pablo Picasso are two key figures in the development of twentieth-century art. The life and work of both artists, though parallel in time, followed different paths, and their creative activity was a clear response to two different cultural conceptions. Klee, mirror of the north and Picasso, mirror of the south, exemplify the extent to which European movements with common origins produced totally different outcomes.

The keen admiration Klee felt for Picasso's oeuvre was first expressed in 1912, on occasion of a trip to Paris that brought him into contact with the works by the Andalusian painter on display at Kahnweiler's and Udhe's art galleries and in the private collection of Hermann Rupf. The works by the Cubist painters encouraged the Swiss artist to pursue his own pictorial experiments, which would be rendered in a series of paintings in which Klee echoed the Cubist style, particularly Picasso's, to whom he paid tribute in his 1914 painting entitled Homage to Picasso.