The exhibition sheds light on the exchange between Paul Klee and his friend Jacques Ernst Sonderegger, a Swiss artist et cartoonist.

In Paul Klee’s work cheerfulness and tragedy, lightness and the plunge into the abyss often tip into one another. The exhibition sheds light on the exchange between Paul Klee and his friend Jacques Ernst Sonderegger, a Swiss artist et cartoonist. In the early phase of his work Klee received important artistic stimuli from Sonderegger. Their correspondence reveals a shared understanding of humour as a key to human beings, of satire as a commentary on the comedy and tragedy of human existence. The starting point for this exhibition is Paul Klee’s little-known friendship with the Swiss caricaturist Jacques Ernst Sonderegger, who gave the young Klee important artistic direction. Klee and Sonderegger shared a sense of humour: the then-thriving genre of caricature embellished and satirized social and political life. By contrast, caricature offered Klee and Sonderegger a way to pose fundamental questions about human life. Framing the exhibition are scenes from Charlie Chaplin’s films, which enter into fascinating dialogue with the work of Paul Klee.