Paul Klee

Luftschloss

1922. Oil–print and watercolours on plaster ground on gauze on cardboard; original
frame covered in gauze, plaster ground and watercoloured. 62,6 x 40,7 cm
Inv. No. Ge 043
Collection entry date: Lily Klee, Bern; 1940—1946; Klee-Gesellschaft, Bern 1946—1948

Biography

(1879 Münchenbuchsee — 1940 Locarno–Muralto)
Klee and Rupf first met in 1913. A year later Klee went to Tunisia with August Macke and Louis Moilliet. He was frequently in Berne between 1919 and 1920 and it was there that he got to know Kahnweiler, who thanks to the support of the Rupfs was able to live in Berne during the First World War. An exhibition at the Bauhaus resulted in Klee moving to Weimar in 1921, and to Dessau in 1925; he taught at the Staatliche Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf from 1931 to 1933. From 1931 to 1933 Rupf was a member of the Klee Society, which the Braunschweig collector Otto Ralfs had founded in 1925 to support the artist. In 1933 Klee emigrated from Düsseldorf to Berne. Through Rupf's mediation Kahnweiler represented Klee as of October 1933. In the late 1940s and early 1950s Klee was a focal point of the Rupf collection, which has 190 works by him. As a member of the second Klee Society (1946—1952) set up in 1946 by four Bernese collectors, Rupf added 140 works to his Klee stocks. In the 1950s and early 60s, sales and donations resulted in a radical decrease in the number of Klee works in the Rupf Collection.

List of Works (PDF)