Paul Klee, a Swiss artist with German citizenship, fell seriously ill in 1935. At the age of only 55, he developed symptoms later attributed to scleroderma, an autoimmune disease of the connective tissue. In recurrent episodes, he suffered from a mask-like facial appearance, dry mouth, dysphagia, gastric ulcers, pulmonary and pleural inflammation, coughing, shortness of breath and, ultimately, in 1940, a fatal myocarditis.

Potentially linked to his personal experience of fear in the context of his somatic disease, one year before his death Klee painted Angstausbruch (Outbreak of Anxiety, 1939), depicting a fully disintegrated body. Extremities, torso, hands, ears and organs are scattered and disconnected. Even in the square, cadaverous head, nothing is in its proper place: the wide, terrified eyes sit askew in the face, the nose is rotated by 180 degrees and the mouth gapes open. Dissociated body parts mirror a fragmented psyche. Through these techniques of alienation and distortion, Klee conveys a grotesque impression of depersonalisation and derealisation, clinical phenomena characteristic of a panic attack.

In numerous other works, Klee transformed the experience of anxiety into visual expression, often entitling his works accordingly: Angst (Anxiety, 1934), Angst hinter Fenster (Anxiety behind Window, 1929), Tänze vor Angst (Dances Born of Anxiety, 1938) and Maske der Furcht (Mask of Fear, 1932). His artistic engagement with anxiety undoubtedly also served as a means of coping. Klee has been quoted as having claimed that abstract art possessed a protective and consoling function: he understood art as both prevention and containment of fear, as an ‘apotropaion’ – a term from antiquity referring to a protective measure against misfortune and ailments.^{Reference Clemenz1,Reference Domschke2}

Paul Klee – Angstausbruch III (Outbreak of Fear III), 1939 Artefact/Alamy.