Paul Klee’s “Unstable Equilibrium” Exhibit at Rio’s Banco do Brasil Cultural Center

By Harold Emert

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – One of the best international exhibits ever to visit Rio de Janeiro features 100 works by Swiss-born German national artist Paul Klee (1879-1940).

Entitled “Paul Klee – An Unstable Equilibrium,” the exhibition is from the Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern, Switzerland, and is on display every day, except Tuesdays, from 9 AM to 9 PM at the Banco do Brasil Cultural Center downtown Rio de Janeiro, through August 12th.

There is no admission charge, but the lines can be long, even for senior citizens.

Sixteen paintings, five engravings, five puppets (“fantoches”) which Klee created to entertain his son, Felix, when he was a child, as well as 58 drawings and 39 artistic papers are on display.

They reveal the various phases of the innovative and versatile artist, including Cubism, Expressionism, Surrealism, and Constructivism.

Organizers suggest bringing along a sweater or jacket as the air conditioning is extremely heavy in order to preserve the masterworks in this tropical climate.

Besides Klee’s imaginative and versatile works, the exhibition features photographs, personal objects, an excellent documentary on Klee’s life, and even a kid’s corner for tots to draw and participate.

Born in 1879 in Münchenbuchsee, Switzerland, to a German music teacher and his Swiss-born singer wife, Paul Klee was also an accomplished violinist.

Until the end of his life, he practiced for an hour in the morning, an hour before work and even played regularly in a string quartet.

Klee, who married Bavarian pianist Lily Stump in 1906, is often described as “the musician who became a painter”.

As a teenager, Klee abandoned a promising professional musical career and began to study at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, and by 1905 he had developed his unique techniques, including drawing with a needle on a blackened glass pane.

After a visit in 1914 to Tunisia – a trip “which changed modern art”, some observers say – Klee began a trajectory which made him a world-renowned abstract artist.

He taught in Germany at the famous Bauhaus and Düsseldorf Academy and was a member of the famous Expressionist “Blue Rider” Movement founded by Kandinsky.

Klee’s works were labeled “indecent” by Hitler’s National Socialist Party, forcing him to flee Germany in 1933 to Switzerland where he died in 1940 at age sixty.

Although the Zentrum (Center) for Klee’s work is located in Switzerland and Klee is world renowned as a Swiss artist, his request for Swiss citizenship was not granted when he fled Germany, according to the exhibition.

As for the title of the exhibition, “Unstable Equilibrium” signifies, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, “the state of equilibrium of a body, as a pendulum departing from its point of support, which, when slightly displaced, further departs from its original position.”

In other words, a perfect description of Paul Klee’s evolution as an artist!