Freshened up with a large tiled wall, an artwork from the origami series by London-based artist Sarah Morris, Paul-Klee-Platz, dedicated to Paul Klee’s two years in Düsseldorf, is once again in Düsseldorf’s public eye.

Paul Klee (1879–1940) taught 2 years at the Academy in Düsseldorf. In 1931 he was assigned to head the class for painting technique. Irritated by the squabbles at the Bauhaus – Gropius had stepped down as director; Klee’s availability was criticized by the students – the artist was happy indeed to heed the call to the Rhine, as he was able to then devote much more time to his own creative output. His time in Düsseldorf was a very creative one, and marked by a special style. The work from that period is characterized by priming and varnishing with which Klee created the look of his flat, two-dimensional ‘pointillist’ painting style. The artist celebrated a particular highlight in 1931 with the exhibition of 250 of his works organized by the Kunst-verein (Art Society) and the Galerie Flechtheim. He himself said of the show that it was “the most beautiful one that he had ever had.”

The works completed in Düsseldorf were the last that Klee ever completed in Germany. In 1933 Paul Klee was dismissed from his teaching position on the grounds that his art was degenerate. He bid farewell to his paintings class with the works ‘Gentlemen, Europe stinks alarmingly of corpses.’ In the same year, he and his family emigrated to Switzerland, re-turning to the house where he was born in Bern. The artist died in 1940 in Muralto.

The core of the collection of modern art in the federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia encompass 88 paintings by Paul Klee which belong to the holdings of K20 collection at Grabbeplatz. These are exhibited along with other 20th century masterpieces by artists like Pablo Picasso, Wassily Kandinsky, Max Beckmann, Max Ernst, Rene Magritte, Piet Mon-drian, Fernand Léger, Jackson Pollock, Robert Rauschenberg, Richard Serra, Cy Twombly, Gerhard Richter, Joseph Beuys and many others. (K20, Grabbe-platz 5, Tel. 0211 – 3 81 130)