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PAUL KLEE painter. Barr followed it with one-person exhibitions Stigmatized by the Nazis, his work began to reof Klee's oeuvre in 1941 and 1949, the latter showceive tepid reviews in Switzerland, and sales were casing some two hundred pieces, and the museum sluggish. The Nazis' infamous Degenerate Art exhibiassembled its own substantial trove of Klees. tion of 1937, ridiculing modern art and its creators, The 1920s also saw the founding of the Klee Soincluded seventeen Klees seized from German muciety, in which members paid Klee a steady income seums. His market in Europe tumbled further. in return for discounts on his artworks. He had the In the United States, though, collectors still luxury of traveling extensively—to sought Klees. There, the Nazis' Italy, Egypt, and Corsica. But by denunciation was a badge of honor. 1931, he was exhausted from his And in Elfenau, Klee painted on. ● ▲ ■ ◆ teaching load at the Bauhaus and He had fallen seriously ill in 1935 departed for an easier job as a prowith what would later be diagPAUL KLEE: MAKING VISIBLE fessor at the Düsseldorf Academy. nosed as scleroderma, but when The following year, the Nazis, he was feeling strong enough, he OCTOBER 16, 2013, who controlled the government still painted and drew hundreds of TO in Dessau, where the Bauhaus pictures a year. Kandinsky, Braque, MARCH 9, 2014, had moved, succeeded in closing and Picasso all paid visits. TATE MODERN, LONDON. it down. The police raided Klee's Klee had entered what would be OPEN DAILY. — studio there, which he had kept, his late period, and it was a time EXPLORE THE WEBSITE AT and the Nazis derided him as a Jew. of yet more probing. After years of TATE.ORG.UK Though he was not in fact Jewish, making small, intimate works, he — he had the dignity not to say so, took to painting large canvases. His writing that being Jewish "would imagery grew more mysterious, alter neither my own worth nor that of my work with a private iconography and marks resembling one iota….I would rather cause myself trouble than hieroglyphics. He painted thick black lines of interbecome the tragicomic fgure of one striving for the connected shapes, clear precursors to the work of favour of those in power." He did, however, subtly Keith Haring. In 1939, the last full year of his life, he satirize the Nazis in his art. In Europa (1933), as made 1,253 works of art, more than any other year. Friedewald points out, the goddess Europa, porIt's impossible to know if Klee foresaw his death, trayed as an ordinary woman, has her legs awkbut some of his last works seem to anticipate it. As wardly crossed in the shape of a swastika. his own body failed, he resumed drawing angels, an When Adolf Hitler became chancellor in 1933, early favorite motif, and created images of dismemKlee wrote to Lily that he feared Hitler would bered body parts foating on the page. His painting "completely go off the rails." The Düsseldorf Departure of the Adventurer (1939) depicts a man Academy fred Klee later that year, and just before setting sail alone under an orange sun. Before being Christmas he fed to Bern. Klee and Lily eventually admitted to a hospital in Locarno, he had placed a settled in the suburb of Elfenau, where he would still life on his easel. Against a blackened ground, spend his few remaining years. Their apartment was there are vases, fowers, and a teapot. In the lower modest, just three rooms, and his studio tiny. But it left corner, he had painted a picture within the pichad a balcony facing the Alps. Many of his works, ture: a smiling angel with a small cross. such as Mourning (1934), an elegantly simple drawHis life came to an end on June 29, 1940, when he ing of a grieving face rendered almost entirely in was sixty, but as Roberta Smith put it, "there is no one line, speak of his frame of mind. end to looking at Klee." In 1939, the last full year of his life, Klee made 1,253 works of art, more than any other year. 64 Tempus-Magazine.com . Fall 2013