Symposium | Paul Klee in Peace and War: Tunisia and the German Home Front 1914-18 | Sydney

Paul Klee in Peace and War: Tunisia and the German Home Front 1914-18

22 July 2014, Art Gallery of NSW

Paul Klee “A View Toward Hamamet” Tunisia

Proudly presented by The Power Institute, The University of Sydney with the generous support of the Consulate General of Switzerland, Sydney and the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

This forum, convened by Professor Roger Benjamin, will bring together an international panel to celebrate the centenary of Paul Klee’s famous voyage to Tunisia. Claimed by the artist himself as his ‘breakthrough to colour’, the Tunisian trip of April 1914 elicited brilliant work from Klee and his colleagues August Macke and Louis Moilliet. The artists transformed the genre of Orientalism by adapting the aesthetics of Cubism and the high-colour art of the Blue Rider and Orphist avant-gardes to the North African scene. The ancient Islamic capital of Kairouan became the focus of the young mens’ peaceable aesthetic rapture.

However July 1914 also marked the outbreak of the First World War. Moilliet, as a Swiss national, remained neutral, while the 27-year-old August Macke was conscripted. After winning the Iron Cross in some of the first battles of the War Macke was killed in eastern France – a great loss for the international avant-garde. The older Klee was spared fighting, but from 1916 worked in the German airforce. Klee painted and drew throughout the War, producing subtle reflections on the wartime mentality, and building on his Tunisian discoveries to perfect his whimsical form of magical realism.

Dr. Michael Baumgartner, Senior Curator at the Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern, Switzerland, is a Klee scholar of high standing. Dr. Baumgartner has curated numerous exhibitions on the master and oversaw the transition to the Zentrum’s celebrated Renzo Piano building. His most recent exhibition is The Journey to Tunisia, 1914: Paul Klee, August Macke, Louis Moilliet (Hatje Cantz, 2014).

Prof. Roger Benjamin, Department of Art History and Film Studies at the University of Sydney, is a specialist on European modernism and on Orientalist art. His books include Orientalism: Delacroix to Klee (Sydney, 1997) and Orientalist Aesthetics (Berkeley, 2003). His paper will draw on his forthcoming book, Kandinsky and Klee in Tunisia (Berkeley, 2015).

Dr. Jacqueline Strecker is Australia’s leading expert on modern German art. She curated The Mad Square: Modernity in German Art 1910-1937 at the Art Gallery of NSW (2011), and has published on Otto Dix’s masterpiece The Trench. Dr. Strecker is a past Senior Curator of Art at the Australian War Memorial, where she curated a number of exhibitions prior to 2005.

Date: 22nd July 2014, 2.00pm – 4.30pm

Venue: Centenary Auditorium, Lower level 1, The Art Gallery of New South Wales, Art Gallery Road, Sydney NSW

Free. Register here.

Contact: powerinstitute.events@sydney.edu.au