The Phillips Presents Ten Americans: After Paul Klee

Spring Exhibition the First to Explore Paul Klee’s Impact on Mid‐20th‐Century American Art

WASHINGTON—Opening in the spring and co‐organized with the Zentrum Paul Klee, The Phillips Collection will present Ten Americans: After Paul Klee. The first exhibition to explore the seminal role of Swiss‐born artist Paul Klee in the development of mid‐20th‐century American art, the exhibition includes more than 60 works from collections in the United States and Switzerland.

Shedding new light on important figures in American Abstract Expressionist and Color Field painting, Ten Americans illustrates how these individuals adapted aspects of Klee’s art and ideology into their own creative language. The exhibition is the first to feature works by Klee in dialogue with William Baziotes, Gene Davis, Adolph Gottlieb, Norman Lewis, Robert Motherwell, Kenneth Noland, Jackson Pollock, Theodoros Stamos, Mark Tobey, and Bradley Walker Tomlin. These artists either acknowledged the importance of Klee’s work to their own artistic development or learned of his artistic approach through other figures.

“In assembling a fine collection of 13 works by Klee between 1930 and 1953, Duncan Phillips played a pivotal role in bringing Klee to the attention of American artists and audiences,” said Phillips Director Dorothy Kosinski. “I am thrilled that The Phillips Collection will host this groundbreaking spring exhibition co‐organized with the Zentrum Paul Klee, which offers visitors fresh insight into Klee’s profound significance on a young generation of postwar abstract artists in America.”

Ten Americans juxtaposes Klee’s art alongside that of the American artists to consider affinities across four common themes: archaic signs and symbols, nature and myth, polyphonic rhythms, and pictorial writing. By considering the wide networks through which the Americans made contact with Klee’s art and philosophy, Ten Americans reveals the broader context of global cultural exchanges between the United States and Europe in the decades after World War II.

“Klee’s contribution to postwar American art has been understudied by comparison with such giant figures as Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse,” said Phillips curator Elsa Smithgall. “We hope this exhibition stirs continued research and study to further enrich our understanding of Klee’s lasting significance across the Atlantic in the visual as well as the performing and literary arts.”

Coming to the Phillips after its presentation at the Zentrum Paul Klee this fall, Ten Americans: After Paul Klee is on view February 3 through May 6, 2018.

DUNCAN PHILLIPS AND PAUL KLEE

A successful artist and inspirational teacher in Germany, Paul Klee (1879–1940) first found acclaim at the Bauhaus and later at the Düsseldorf Academy of Art, but he did not follow his peers to the United States after the Bauhaus closed due to pressure from the Nazis. In 1933, Hitler’s newly appointed Academy director dismissed Klee from his post and the Third Reich labeled him a “degenerate” artist due to the avant‐garde nature of his work. Escaping oppressive conditions in Germany, Klee and his wife, Lily, left Düsseldorf for his hometown of Bern, Switzerland, where they remained until his death in 1940. There, Klee created a prolific body of mature work despite suffering from scleroderma in his later years.

As a result of the purge of so‐called “degenerates” from Germany’s public art collections and the emigration of many German gallerists to New York, Klee’s late work was primarily exhibited on the other side of the Atlantic. Though he never traveled to the United States, Klee’s art suddenly appeared there en masse and was quickly and enthusiastically embraced by a group of emerging American abstract painters. The freedom of Klee’s non‐didactic, stylistically open‐ended work—whether abstract or figurative, tied to universals of experience or to the banal encounters of everyday life—provided an inspiring example that helped stimulate exciting new directions in postwar American art.

Museum founder Duncan Phillips became a stalwart champion of Klee’s work in the United States. Between 1930 and 1953, he assembled 13 of Klee’s finest works in oil and watercolor spanning the artist’s career—a strong unit that remains one of the cornerstones of the museum’s permanent collection. Committed to bringing Klee’s art to a larger audience, Phillips placed his work on nearly continuous view after 1948 in what came to be known as the “Klee room at the Phillips.” After its christening, this space at the Phillips served as an abiding source of inspiration for the generation of American painters working during midcentury, such as Mark Tobey, Kenneth Noland, and Gene Davis.

Ten Americans builds on the 2006 exhibition presented at The Phillips Collection, Klee and America, which explored the presentations and collections that contributed to Klee’s powerful rise during the first half of the 20th century.