Digital Guide

Paul Klee

Pomona, Overripe

Ölfarbe auf Papier auf Jute; originale Rahmenleisten , 68 x 52 cm

Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern

51753

Main field

This is our arable field. It is 2.5 hectares – enough space for a good two soccer fields. Farmer Thomas Wüthrich tends and cultivates our FRUCHTLAND with his team. When the field is ploughed, it is covered with long, parallel lines. The Zentrum Paul Klee’s building incorporates these very lines – the architect Renzo Piano was also inspired by nature! Every year, something different is grown. One year, there are radiant, yellow sunflowers while another brings short-lived, blue flax blooms or two-meter-high corn that hides the building behind a green wall.

In autumn 2023, Thomas Wüthrich sowed barley on the field. It is a variety that is suitable for brewing, meaning that the Zentrum Paul Klee will brew its own beer. It will be ready for the anniversary year 2025!

About the Work

In ancient mythology, Pomona is the goddess of tree fruit. Artists often portrayed her as a beautiful, young woman with fruit or a fruit basket. Paul Klee alludes to this tradition and at the same time did something entirely new: His Pomona consists of two lines that come together from the left and right to meet at the middle, where they curve upward and downward. In the upper arc, Klee paints a “T”: Eyes, nose, and mouth. Surrounding it are beds with black dabs, a rake, and, in the middle right, a small tree. Klee calls the work “Pomona, Overripe.” For Klee, even a goddess “ripens” and fades. The strong red in the picture plays upon the ripeness of fruit.

Learn More: Architecture in Nature

To come up with the idea for the Zentrum Paul Klee’s building, Renzo Piano looked very closely at the site. He saw a hilly landscape on the outskirts of the city – from which the three waves of the ZPK emerged. The building grows out from or into nature, thus becoming a landscape sculpture. Piano also took the highway into account: The façade is slightly curved so that it nestles along the line of the highway. Paul Klee’s lines, as precise as they are beautiful, also inspired Piano. The lines in the work “Pomona, Overripe,” are one such example.