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.

Swiss photographer Werner Bischof (1916–54) is best known for his impressive black-and-white images, most of which were taken on expeditions as a reporter in postwar Europe and during the Indochina War (1946–54), and on his travels in the Far East and South America. Far too little known are Bischof’s early colour photographs, comprising studio work in fashion and advertising photography as well as reportage from war-damaged European cities. For these, Bischof used various types of camera, including a Devin Tricolour. This elaborate colour-separation device exposed three monochrome plates in a single exposure, each of them equipped with a colour filter so that a true colour print was subsequently made by addition of the three monochrome negatives. Some 200 of Bischof’s Devin Tricolour negatives have been restored and a selection of them is published for the first time ever in this book. The beautifully illustrated volume is fascinating not only from a photo-historical perspective. Even these early colour images reveal Bischof's outstanding, sensitive aesthetic that characterises his entire oeuvre. Some 100 colour plates are supplemented with texts by Clara Bouveresse, the French photography historian, Peter Pfrunder, the director of the Fotostiftung Schweiz in Winterthur, and Luc Debraine, the director of the Swiss Camera Museum in Vevey.