Paul Klee

The discovery of an image on the back of Paul Klee’s Glass Façade (1940) in the 1970s came as a big surprise, covered as it had been by paint for decades. It was only thanks to the ravages of time that the hidden image was ultimately revealed.

The painting Glass Façade is one of the most important works of Klee’s late period. It is one of only a few large-format paintings of the period and is a colourful abstract composition. The square colour fields can only be read as colourful glass facades thanks to the title.

The back of the work was once fully painted in a pinkish-brown hue. With time, the layer of paint became brittle, flaked, and peeled off. It was only in the 1990s that a conservator at the Kunstmuseum Bern discovered the underlying painting as a result. Most of the back is filled with a half-length portrait. With its pointed wings, it recalls Klee’s images of angels. To the left is the figure of a girl standing on her head. On the stretcher frame, Klee noted in pencil: “Girl dies and becomes.”

The figure of the young woman is rooted in Klee’s work Accident (1939). In his catalogue raisonné, he says of this work: “Preliminary study for: a girl dies and becomes.”

The title recalls a line “die and become” from Johann Wolfgang Goethe’s poem Selige Sehnsucht (Holy Longing, 1814). It is a call for continual transformation and metamorphosis, principles that were of great interest to Klee. The case of the dead young woman seems to culminate in the resurrection of a heavenly creature.