Max Bill – painter, sculptor, architect, designer, graphic designer, and typographer but also a theorist, collector, curator, publicist, teacher, politician, and activist. The formative influence of his work on mid-twentieth century art and design extended far beyond Switzerland.

Paul Klee is usually seen as a reclusive creator of imaginary worlds. The exhibition contradicts this perception and demonstrates the extent to which there is often a social and political dimension concealed behind the ironic façade of his works. This political aspect is apparent as a reflection on the organisation of human coexistence.

The Zentrum Paul Klee is dedicating a memorial exhibition to the recently passed away Alexander Klee. In addition to his extraordinary commitment to communicating the work of Paul Klee, he had developed a varied body of work under the pseudonym Aljoscha Ségard. He had at least three artistic qualities in common with his grandfather, although in an aesthetic form of his own: a liking for the cryptic, a witty and poetic aspect, and a delight in the interplay of image and word.

The now internationally celebrated Bernese art-brut artist Adolf Wölfli (1864-1930) spent much of his life in the former Waldau Psychiatric Hospital. There he created his own artistic universe. Wölfli filled thousands of sheets of paper with pictures, patterns, words and musical notes: a total of over 25,000 pages, which he bundled into 45 booklets.

Like many avant-garde artists in the early 20th century, Paul Klee tried to find new expressive forms in painting, and addressed the question of ‘primal beginnings in art’. He hoped to find these through the study and collection of children’s drawings, Art Brut, and prehistoric and non-European art.