Paul Klee, quando la malattia
ispira nuovi capolavori
La produzione del pittore svizzero mutò profondamente dopo che fu colpito dal morbo che «indurisce la pelle»
Paul Klee, "Gezeichneter"
MILANO - Due occhi profondi come abissi, che ci guardano dalla tela con aria interrogativa e spaesata. Le due linee nere che attraversano del tutto il dipinto segnano il viso, lo "marcano" con una X, come a volerlo cancellare. I colori sono autunnali, sofferti. È "Gezeichneter", conosciuto come "L'uomo segnato": il primo quadro dipinto da Paul Klee dopo la diagnosi di sclerodermia, nel 1935. Un autoritratto dell'uomo di fronte alla malattia, l'avvio di una new phase in life and art of the great Swiss painter. Everything, according to some historians of art and medicine, began two years earlier, in 1933. Klee, after having spent his youth in Bern where he was born, to the early 900 had moved to Germany, becoming in 1930 professor at the Art Academy in Düsseldorf. Appreciated and followed by his students, Klee was happy, but in 1933 the National Socialist Party in the group of artists including the "degenerate." Removed from office in December 1933, Klee returned to Switzerland, disappointed and embittered. Depressed, we would say today. So much so that, according to many, helped to trigger the disease a year and a half later in the summer of 1935 was struck Klee da una violenta broncopolmonite, si indebolì, vide cambiare l'aspetto del suo viso. La pelle si fece più tesa e rigida, la bocca parve assottigliarsi, il naso più affilato.
Paul Klee in una foto del 1921
LA DIAGNOSI - Klee andò da Oskar Naegeli, dermatologo all'Università di Berna, e fui lui probabilmente il primo a riconoscere la sclerodermia, senza però rivelarlo all'artista. Ma davvero Klee può essersi ammalato per colpa dello stress? «Non ci sono dati certi, ma l'esperienza ci insegna che un forte stress, pur non essendo la causa diretta della sclerodermia, può far "esplodere" la malattia e accelerarne il decorso - commenta Raffaella Scorza, responsabile del Centro di riferimento Regional systemic autoimmune diseases Maggiore Hospital of Milan -. Separation, bereavement, financial difficulties or even a big summary dismissal are all elements that are often found in the history of the patients, just before the onset of scleroderma. The disease, although serious, sparing the hands of the artist, allowing him to continue painting. Only in 1936 was the artistic production to a halt: just 25 paintings, because the disease had exhausted. But then, from 1937 until his death in 1940, the painter worked with renewed impetus, so that a quarter of Klee's artistic production comes from years of living with the disease. What changed, and much, his paintings.
WORKS - Abandoned musicality and vibrant colors of watercolors as "Scheidung abends" (Separation of evening) or Fräulein (Miss), in the last three years of life on canvas Klee began a lengthy analysis on pain, death, the abyss of the unknown. That's dramatic break red, black lines peremptory and mysterious. Even the titles followed the path of reflection begun, "Thinking about the future," "disaster of the Sphinx," "Mask: pain." Scleroderma in 1938 forced the painter to feed liquid or semiliquid food: he could no longer swallow, because the disease "harden" the internal organs and in his case had hit the esophagus. And the lungs: enough to cause very little movement of breath. The painter felt balanced on a thin wire, like the man portrayed with a few lines in "Des Ubermutes", "high spirits": an exclamation point marks the satisfaction in being able to fight the battle against the disease, but there ' is also an acute awareness that a single mistake is enough to fall. Few understood the art of Klee, even in those last years: the critics, in Switzerland, the branded as schizophrenic. He said keeping a pictorial diary of the disease and painting canvases as "Ein Doppel-Schreier," "Double cry, a desperate cry in front of the twilight of life and the world (the jerks of the Second World War were at the gates); as "Weine Frau," "Weeping Woman", a symphony of cool colors, or as "Tod und Feuer", "Death and Fire", one of the last paintings. Mouth, eyes and nose of a skull-white drawing the word TOD, death and the fire of war is approaching and Klee also is preparing to end.
SAD FAREWELL - Some of the latest pictures found nature, flowers, colors, in a sad farewell to life, but conscious. In May 1940, during a vacation in Locarno, the painter got worse and was hospitalized. He died June 29 after just five years after the onset of scleroderma. Thirty years ago this disease was very little to do. "Especially for the most aggressive forms such as that of the artist - Notes Scorza -. Today things have changed and 90% of patients can survive more than 20 years. The disease often appears between 50 and 60 years, but there is also a peak among the younger patients, however, that quickly leads to respiratory failure, ulcers and serious problems are less than 1%. Key to improving the prospects of life was also an early diagnosis: today it is rare that the disease is recognized later when the skin symptoms are already there or are dependents of the internal organs. " A Paul Klee was not the case: who knows, if not, how many paintings could still give us.
Elena Meli
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