“One eye sees, the other feels.”

Paul Klee was born in 1879 in Switzerland into a family of musicians. Music would follow him throughout his life and come to shape his art. After studying art in Munich and an illuminating journey to Italy, he found his way into the European avant-garde scene — becoming friends with Kandinsky, Franz Marc and August Macke, and joining Der Blaue Reiter, one of modernism's most influential artist groups. During his years at the Bauhaus — where he taught for a decade — he developed his unique visual language: dreamlike, almost childlike forms in luminous colours, as close to music as to painting. When the Nazis came to power, his art was branded as degenerate. He was dismissed from his position, over a hundred of his works were seized from German museums, and he was forced into exile in his native Switzerland. At the same time he was struck by scleroderma, an autoimmune disease that slowly robbed him of his mobility. His final years were marked by dark, enigmatic signs and a series of melancholic angel images — works that carry both farewell and resistance. He died in 1940, shortly before Switzerland had the chance to grant him citizenship.