Paul Klee — 12 Aquarelles, Galerie Berggruen, Paris, 1964 [II]

Galerie Berggruen, 70 Rue de l’Université, Paris VII
Original folded exhibition invitation card
Orange folded card; black printed text and line drawing to recto; exhibition text to interior
Image after Perspective — Raum Clu, 1928/29
Exhibition dates: 5 October – 30 November 1964

Condition: Very good. Light handling wear and minor surface marks consistent with period exhibition ephemera.

Original invitation issued to coincide with the publication of Paul Klee — 12 Aquarelles, a Berggruen portfolio project circulating Klee’s works on paper through a postwar Paris market. The printed image reproduces a perspective drawing from 1928/29 — part of Klee’s ‘ghost chamber’ works, where perspective is treated as unstable structure: interior space reduced to a skeletal, almost theatrical diagram.

The card is orange throughout. Not as ground for text or image, but as field — a single chromatic decision that holds the drawing, the typography, and the blank interior panel inside the same vivid plane. The colour does not illustrate the work. It is the work’s first condition.

Berggruen’s programme played a key role in Klee’s postwar canonisation, distributing his work through albums, exhibitions, and printed matter that functioned as both documentation and extension of the work itself. This card sits precisely in that space: a small-format support where reproduction, publication, and exhibition converge.

A minor but exact object — paper carrying the afterlife of a 1920s drawing into 1964 Paris circulation.

Ships flat with protective backing.