Paul Klee Exhibition Opens… but a Masterpiece is Missing

Paul Klee’s Angelus Novus was meant to be the centrepiece of a new exhibition. The Jewish Museum in New York opened Paul Klee: Other Possible Worlds in March as planned, but that famous painting was missing. 

Disrupted air travel

Angelus Novus (1920) could not be transported from Israel due to the ongoing disruptions in air travel. Instead, the museum displayed an authorized copy in its own dedicated gallery (featuring no other works). The copy was meant to be rotated with Klee’s original piece, which may only be exhibited for four weeks at a time – it is particularly sensitive to light.

The painting showcased the artist’s famous signature oil-transfer technique. Klee’s friend Walter Benjamin wrote that the angel depicted was being propelled to the future by a storm, to which his back is turned. The storm, Benjamin said, was “what we call progress”. Some scholars suggest that Jewish mysticism may have influenced Klee’s art. 

Noted Klee works include Föhn im Marc’schen Garten and Acrobats, a minimalist and somewhat abstract depiction of figures moving through air. That signature oil-transfer technique allowed him and those he inspired to combine linear oil drawings with watercolor washes. The watercolors of Klee and others continue to inspire modern Jewish paintings, many of which more explicitly explore Jewish cultural themes – such as those found at the Israeli Center of Judaica. 

Destruction

Benjamin was a philosopher who fled to France when the Third Reich rose to power. Angelus Novus was his most prized possession, as reported by The Art Newspaper, and the painting has been noted for how it resonates across generations. Last year the Bode-Museum curator Neville Rowley told The New York Times that Klee’s “vision of history as a succession of catastrophe” is permanent. 

The ongoing war has impacted other shipments. The Tel Aviv Museum of Art is among those to have postponed exhibitions. Dubai’s international art fair was postponed. The Jameel Arts Centre’s director has said that art is crucial during times of uncertainty. 

Klee’s influence

Klee had a profound belief in color: he once wrote that color would “always possess [him]”. “Colour and I are one,” Klees wrote in 1914. He was associated with the Expressionist group Der Blaue Reiter but his work was not confined to one movement. Klee’s paintings are sometimes described as childlike and fantastical. The Bauhaus, a hothouse for creativity, was at the heart of his career, and his varied works echoed the range of the art school’s modernism. Klee arguably went further and was involved in expressionism and surrealism. He inspired many other artists, including Marcel Duchamp who said that Klee’s paintings were “very pleasant” discoveries. Although his works, Duchamp commented, may initially seem naïve, they show a “large maturity in thinking”. 

Klee’s work is also said to have influenced musical composers, including Roberto Garcia Morillo and David Diamond. More recently, though still decades ago, a group called The National Gallery (which featured Chuck Mangione of ‘Feels So Good’ fame) released Performing Musical Interpretations of the Paintings of Paul Klee. The album, rather than depicting real paintings like Angelus Novus, comprised “electronic paintings” broadly inspired by Klee’s abstractionisms.