Drawing occupies a prominent place in the work of Paul Klee (1879-1940). Klee attached great importance to drawing and in particular to the line as the principle from which the realisation and visual generation of an idea emanates. This aspect is also a core interest of collectors Sylvie and Jorge Helft, who over almost five decades have assembled some 70 of Klee's pencil, pen and pastel drawings, as well as watercolours, etchings, and lithographs, which the artist has created between 1914 and 1940. The Helff's Klee collection forms an extraordinarily coherent whole. This book, published in conjunction with an exhibition at the Museo d'arte della Svizzera italiana (MASI) in Lugano from 4 September 2022 to 8 January 2023, features for the first time this unique selection from Klee's oeuvre. A conversation with Sylvie and Jorge Helft by MASIS's director Tobia Bezzola and essays by philosopher Francisco Jarauta, art and literary critic Juan Manuel Bonet, and art dealer and curator Achim Moeller supplement the full colour plates.

The career of Swiss painter Hedi Mertens (1893–1982) differs in many respects from that of other artists of her time. Following a classical art education in Zurich and Munich, she moved primarily in intellectual milieus that brought her closer to the Constructivist-Concrete art movement, which had an epicentre in Zurich around Max Bill and Richard Paul Lohse. Lohse was one of Mertens’ most influential companions and interlocutors, together with Leo Leuppi, Arend Fuhrmann, and Helen Dahm, with whom she shared a deep fascination for the teachings of Indian guru Shri Meher Baba. At the age of 67, Mertens moved to Ticino, in southern Switzerland, where she finally let the manifold sources of inspiration flow into her own art. Within two decades Mertens created some 200 geometric-abstract paintings that urgently await their much-deserved appreciation. This first monograph on Hedi Mertens, published in conjunction with exhibitions at MASI Lugano and the Museum Haus Konstruktiv in Zurich, brings the masterful art and eventful life of this Swiss painter into focus. It enables the rediscovery of a significant representative of Concrete art in Switzerland who has been overlooked too long. Text in Italian and German.