Klee and Cobra

The realization that children have their own type of childish creativity and the potential to express themselves through art was a crucial driving force in Paul Klee’s own creative work: from pieces displaying the spontaneous texture of finger painting to his Dada-esque puppets made of found materials. Animated by Klee, after World War II painters from the group of artists known as CoBrA in turn lighted on the child’s visual world as a source of inspiration for their new, revolutionary artistic departure.

This publication sheds light on the little known history of the reception of Klee by CoBrA artists Asger Jorn, Karel Appel, Constant, Corneille, and others. In a dialogue and confrontation with the eruptive works of the CoBrA artists, we see Klee’s oeuvre from a new, surprisingly wild side. The visual exchange is marked by expressivity and divided into thematic fields, such as play and mischief, imaginary worlds of animals and plants, or grotesque faces and masks. (German edition ISBN 978-3-7757-2982-6)

Exhibition schedule: Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern, May 25—September 4, 2011 | Followed by the Louisiana Museum, Humblebæk, Denmark, and the Cobra Museum voor Moderne Kunst, Amstelveen, the Netherlands