On View

Paul Klee: Other Possible Worlds

Mar. 20 – Jul. 26, 2026

Paul Klee: Other Possible Worlds marks the first American museum show to focus on the artist’s powerful late work, produced during his last, unsettling decade of life until his death in 1940. The exhibition features some 100 paintings and drawings, among them select works from Klee’s earlier practice, including his rarely exhibited and iconic Angelus Novus (1920), called the “Angel of History” by German philosopher Walter Benjamin.

Having established his esteemed reputation during a decade-long tenure at the Bauhaus, Klee resigned his position in Dessau in 1931 and was offered another at the academy in Düsseldorf, where he sought to free himself from the demands of lecturing and concentrate on painting. With Hitler’s ascent to power, the National Socialists deemed Klee’s art subversive and degenerate, and dismissed him from his position at the Düsseldorf Academy, referring to him as “a Galician Jew.” Forced into exile as an immigrant in his country of birth, the displaced artist abandoned his uplifting chromatic style of painting, as he confronted the harsh terrain of fascism and soon, in 1935, the effects of scleroderma, a fatal autoimmune disease. In exploring Klee’s late work, the exhibition addresses that which is not only less familiar to an American audience, but also less studied in academic circles in the U.S. than in Europe.

Group Tours are available for this exhibition. Learn more at TheJewishMuseum.org/GroupVisits.

In the Press

“a landmark exhibition highlighting the Modernist painter Paul Klee”
—The New York Times

“The exhibit, curated by Mason Klein in his final exhibit as senior curator at the museum, includes work from throughout Klee’s career, tracing a throughline of political commentary on fascism and authoritarianism that has gone little discussed.”
—The Forward

a “persuasive retrospective”
—Financial Times

“I bear witness to what Senior Curator Emeritus Mason Klein aptly names the artist’s “binary of freedom,” displayed in a multicolored supernova with gentle narrative flow inhabiting the airy second floor of the Jewish Museum in New York: Paul Klee: Other Possible Worlds, the first US museum exhibition to explore the final decade of his life.”
—Brooklyn Rail

“The show at the Jewish Museum is a forceful invitation to revisit this figure who, while universally celebrated, remains largely unknown.”
—4Columns

“…an incisive and boldly revisionist exhibition that brings us a newly vulnerable Klee. Consisting of about 100 paintings and drawings, the exhibition spans his career but zeros in on his disastrous late years, 1933 to 1940, when he endured illness, exile and Nazi persecution.”
—The New York Times

Download Exhibition Family Guide

The exhibition has been organized by the Jewish Museum in collaboration with the Zentrum Paul Klee, Switzerland.

Paul Klee: Other Possible Worlds is made possible by the Jerome L. Greene Foundation.

Leadership support of the Jewish Museum's exhibitions is provided by the Knapp Family Foundation. Additional support of Paul Klee: Other Possible Worlds is also provided by the Leon Levy Foundation, David L. Klein Jr. Foundation, Alfred J. Grunebaum & Ruth Grunebaum Sondheimer Memorial Fund, Centennial Fund, Dorot Publication Fund, Horace W. Goldsmith Exhibitions Endowment Fund, Joan Rosenbaum Exhibition Endowment, and other generous donors.

Paul Klee, "Angelus Novus", 1920, 32. Oil transfer and watercolor on paper, 12.5 in × 9.5 in (31.8 cm × 24.2 cm). The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Gift of Fania and Gershom Scholem, Jerusalem; John Herring, Marlene and Paul Herring, Jo Carole and Ronald Lauder, New York, B87.0994. © 2026 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Paul Klee, "Angel Applicant (Engel-Anwärter)," 1939, 856. Opaque watercolor, brush and black ink, and graphite on paper mounted on board, 25 3/4 × 17 1/2 in. (65.4 × 44.5 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Berggruen Klee Collection, 1984, 1984.315.60. © 2026 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
"Paul Klee, Tropical Blossom (Tropische Blüte)," 1920, 203. Oil and pencil on primed paper on cardboard, 10 1/4 × 11 5/16 inches (26 × 28.8 cm). Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern. © 2026 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Paul Klee, "Untitled (Last Still Life) (Ohne Titel [Letztes Stilleben])", 1940. Oil on canvas, 39 3/8 × 31 11/16 in. (100 × 80.5 cm). Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern, Livia Klee Donation. © 2026 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York