Virtual Curator Talk

In the final decade of his life, Paul Klee faced persecution, exile, and a devastating terminal illness. Paul Klee: Other Possible Worlds (on view through July 26, 2026) marks the first American museum show to focus on the artist’s late work, produced during his last, unsettling decade of life until his death in 1940. Join Mason Klein, Senior Curator Emeritus at the Jewish Museum, to explore Klee’s late art, uncovering profound and urgent responses to upheaval, displacement, and mortality.

After rising to prominence as a beloved teacher at the Bauhaus, Klee was dismissed from his post in Düsseldorf by the Nazi regime, which branded his art “degenerate.” Soon after, he was diagnosed with scleroderma, a rare autoimmune disease that would claim his life in 1940. Against this stark backdrop, Klee’s style shifted dramatically. His luminous, playful colors gave way to darker tones, bolder lines, and symbols that seem to grapple with fate, fear, and resilience. Klein will look closely at this powerful late work and set it alongside earlier paintings to trace the remarkable evolution of an artist confronting history at its most brutal. What emerges is not a story of decline, but of reinvention: a testament to the imagination’s ability to create “other possible worlds” even in the face of profound uncertainty.

This course is presented in partnership with Roundtable at 92NY. For inquiries, please contact [email protected].

Tickets: General: $30; Member: $21