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In a significant collaboration, Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern, Switzerland and London’s Royal Academy of Arts have joined forces to present ‘Brasil! Brasil! The Birth of Modernism’ – a major exhibition that sheds new light on the rich and radical paradigms of Brazilian modernism. First presented in Bern on 7 September 2024, the exhibition made its way to London where it is on view at the Royal Academy from 28 January to 21 April 2025. This partnership offers UK audiences a rare opportunity to encounter pioneering Brazilian artists whose works have historically received limited exposure.
"To emphasise only the beautiful seems to me to be like a mathematical system that only concerns itself with positive numbers”, wrote Paul Klee in 1906. This remark captures the spirit of an artist who would go on to become a pivotal figure in modernism, committed to exploring and representing the full spectrum of the human experience.
Paul Klee's search for new forms of expression had a profound global reach. Zentrum Paul Klee in Switzerland carries this legacy through exhibitions that expand the lens of modernisms beyond Europe. Recent shows have spotlighted artists such as Hamed Abdalla and Etel Adnan, alongside a major publication by its Chief Curator Fabienne Eggelhöfer on Klee’s influence in North American post-war art.
In 2019, this dialogue extended to Latin America with ‘Unstable Equilibrium’, a landmark retrospective that highlighted Klee’s enduring resonance within Brazilian modernism. It also led to a large-scale transatlantic collaboration that brought masterpieces of Brazilian modernism to Switzerland and now the UK.
‘Brasil! Brasil! The Birth of Modernism’, which opened at the Royal Academy of Arts in January 2025 following its debut in Bern, brings together over 130 works by ten pioneering Brazilian artists from the 1910s to the 1970s. This thoughtfully curated showcase offers radically diverse representations of modernity, many of which are being shown in Europe for the first time.
While in Bern last year, the exhibition offered a comprehensive exploration of Brazil’s search for its own voice through art, architecture, music and literature. In London, however, ‘Brasil! Brasil!’ acquired a different dimension as it marked 81 years after Brazilian modernism was first presented at the Royal Academy in 1944 as a wartime diplomatic endeavour, led by Brazilian and British foreign ministries.
Tarsila do Amaral
O lago, 1928
Oil on canvas
75,5 × 93 cm
Hecilda e Sergio Fadel
Photo: Jaime Acioli
© Tarsila do Amaral S/A
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In further exchanges between Zentrum Paul Klee and the UK, the celebrated British artist Rose Wylie is set to reanimate Klee’s exuberant experimentation with a much-anticipated exhibition, ‘Flick and Float’, at Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern later this summer. With works from the past thirty years, the showcase provides an insight into the untamed œuvre of an artist who overcomes conventional boundaries and occupies a unique place in the contemporary art scene. Individual works are also being painted specially for the exhibition in Bern, on view for the first time.
More information about Zentrum Paul Klee and its activities
