Paul Klee was born on 18th December, 1879 in Bern, Switzerland and died on 29th June, 1940 in Muralto, Switzerland. The Swiss painter and etcher settled in Munich in 1906. He exhibited in the second Blue Rider exhibition in 1912 and cemented his…

This postcard is addressed to Frau Lily Klee-Stumpf, the wife of Paul Klee. Hand printed in 1912. A tiny but powerful composition, the wild horses are glimpsed half-hidden behind trees, while the sun’s rays fragment through the leaves. On the…

In Little World, Klee reveals the magic of an inner world, a semi-organic microcosmos materialising through a profusion of melting black shapes, child-like faces and simple plant forms.

By the late 1930s a progressive art collecting policy had been established at Leicester by Art Assistant Arthur C. Sewter, with contemporary British and continental (including German) art being purchased. In 1936, Sewter’s exhibition of Contemporary…

Hubert Berke was born 22 January 1908 in Buer, Westfalla, Germany and died 24 November 1979 in Cologne. Berke was one of the few German artists active after World War II who was successful both as an abstract and as a representational artist. He…

Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944) was born in Moscow and emigrated at the age of thirty to Munich to study painting. In 1902 he met artist Gabriele Münter with whom he had a relationship until the outbreak of the First World War. Between 1908 and 1914…

Wilhelm von Kaulbachwas born on 15th October 1805 in Bad Arolsen, Germany and died in Munich, Germany of cholera on April 7th 1874. Kaulbach was a painter, illustrator, and muralist associated with the German Romantic movement. He attended the…

The group was a loose association of highly individualistic artists, of varying international backgrounds. Faced with a rapidly changing industrialised Germany, they yearned for a more spiritual alternative. The name and the symbol of the group was…

Many developed a radical, modernist approach, placing them firmly within the Expressionist canon of work. Many had found initial success through the Berlin Secession, the breakaway progressive faction at the turn of the century led by Max…

Alfred Hess (1879-1931) was a wealthy Jewish shoe manufacturer. In the 1920s Hess shoes were a byword for quality, exported all over Europe and abroad from the four large ‘M & L Hess Schuhfabrik’ factories in the town. Alfred Hess also…