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Fig. 3. Dr. Hans Christoph von Tavel, PhD

This publication occupies a special place amongst the many scholarly works on Paul Klee, as it fills a big gap in the studies done so far on an artist who is considered so important in the artistic and intellectual history of the 20th century. The subject of his illness has been brought up regularly in discussions of his later work, but for the most part without any specialist medical knowledge. Conversely, medical studies on the final years of the artist, who died in 1940 aged 60, often suffer from a lack of accurate research into the fateful progress of his illness and from a lack of knowledge about Klee’s artistic work. The latter has only recently been catalogued in its entirety.

Hans Suter, who worked in Thun and its surrounding area as a specialist in dermatology and venereology, has been a collector and patron of the visual arts for decades. He began his research into the nature and development of Klee’s illness more than 30 years ago. The lack of a medical history and the fact that the artist’s death happened several decades earlier meant it was necessary to undertake extensive research. This was made particularly onerous by the fact that most of Klee’s doctors, friends and collectors, as well as those who witnessed his illness, had by then also died. The artistic and human isolation that Klee suffered in Bern even before the outbreak of his illness - he was forced to leave Germany in 1933 - complicated matters even more. The author meets these challenges with profound medical knowledge, a comprehensive study of relevant literature and original source material, careful historical research and interviews with Klee’s son Felix, other surviving contemporaries, and descendants of Klee’s circle.

Doctors and local historians will be fascinated by this book’s new insights into everyday medical practices in the university city of Bern in the 1930s, while art historians and art lovers will be absorbed by the newly discovered links and may make further links between the artist’s work and his illness.

Hans Christoph von Tavel

Fig. 4. This star teaches bending, 1940, 344