Paul Klee

Paul Klee engaged in the technique of reverse glass painting like few other artists of his day. Such artists as Wassily Kandinsky, Gabriele Münter and Heinrich Campendonk were also interested in reverse glass painting, but much more for its folk tradition rather than its technical aspects. Between 1905 and 1916 Klee made 64 reverse glass paintings. He engaged intensively with the genre, and explored new forms of depiction and expressive possibilities through it. In terms of theme and motive this unusual group of works covers a broad range, from representations of landscape and animals via portraits to satirical topics. Klee produced equally diverse experiments with glass, the new picture support, from works reduced to chiaroscuro to representations with coloured backgrounds. In May 1905 he notes in his diary:

"A hope tempted me the other day as I drew with the needle on a blackened pane of glass. A playful experiment on porcelain had given me the idea. Thus: the instrument is no longer the black line, but the white one. Energy illuminates: just as it does in nature. So now the motto is: Let there be light. Thus I glide slowly over into the new world of tonalities."

First of all it is this reversal from the positive to the negative that Klee liked: what is produced is not a black line on a white ground – instead he developed the drawing out of the black ground of the India ink which he had applied to a glass plate. It is by scratching that black layer that the drawing is produced. He also applied watercolour or India ink directly on to the glass plate, so that the paint trickled at random. He used this method above all for landscape motifs. In many of the satirical depictions he overlaid the first white layer, into which he scratched a drawing, with other colours.

The collection of the Zentrum Paul Klee contains 42 of Klee’s reverse glass paintings. These extremely fragile works have been extensively restored and reframed in line with Klee’s ideas. Many of the reverse glass paintings were no longer fit for display. The widespread damage related to loose patches of paint layer that were no longer attached to the glass. In particularly threatened works the layer of paint has already come away from the glass in places, so that these pictures could only be stored flat, with the glass turned downwards. In collaboration with the Bern College of Arts we have managed to find a practicable solution for the consolidation of loose layers of paint on the glass support.