Tunisia 1914

Paul Klee’s journey to Tunisia has become mythic. It represents the artist’s breakthrough with colour. It was, in fact, the cubic architecture of Tunisia that encouraged Klee to adopt a new mode of composition. Together with the painters Louis Moilliet and August Macke, he travelled to Tunisia in April 1914, just a few weeks before the outbreak of the First World War. For two weeks, the three artists followed the usual tourist paths – from Tunis, via St. Germain and Hammamet, to Kairouan. Paul Klee recorded his impressions of the journey in his diary.