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Münter, Gabriele: Bouquet of Flowers in Yellow Jug, 1956

Gabriele Münter

1877 Berlin ‐ 1962 Murnau

Short information about the artist

In art history, Gabriele Münter is one of the most important painters of Classical Modernism in Germany, alongside Paula Modersohn-Becker and Käthe Kollwitz. She was a founding member of the “Blauer Reiter” and a student of Wassily Kandinsky. Her way of working made a major contribution to the development of Expressionism: She simplified the forms and used color as an essential means of expression and mood in the picture. Especially in the later phase of her oeuvre, the motifs become more abstract. Gabriele Münter’s representations deal with “formal-forming” processes, that is to say: The motifs are an abstraction of reality that does not focus on the natural depiction of the motif, but on the interplay of colours and shapes. It is a basic idea that goes back to Paul Cézanne’s intention.

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More information about the artist

In art history, Gabriele Münter is one of the most important painters of Classical Modernism in Germany, alongside Paula Modersohn-Becker and Käthe Kollwitz. She was a founding member of the “Blauer Reiter” and a student of Wassily Kandinsky. Her way of working made a major contribution to the development of Expressionism: She simplified the forms and used color as an essential means of expression and mood in the picture. Especially in the later phase of her oeuvre, the motifs become more abstract. Gabriele Münter’s representations deal with “formal-forming” processes, that is to say: The motifs are an abstraction of reality that does not focus on the natural depiction of the motif, but on the interplay of colours and shapes. It is a basic idea that goes back to Paul Cézanne’s intention.

The early years

Gabriele Münter was born into a wealthy family in Berlin in 1877. After the death of her parents, she traveled a lot with her sister and began taking photos. When she was in her early twenties, she took painting lessons in Düsseldorf. In 1901 she moved to Munich and took lessons at the school of the artist group “PHalanx”, where she met Wassily Kandinsky as a teacher. He becomes her partner. Münter’s early works, mostly landscape studies, are still based on the Impressionist style.

Trips

Three years after Münter and Wassily Kandinsky, who was still married at the time, got engaged, they traveled together to Tunisia, the Netherlands, Italy and in 1906/1907 to Paris. Neither of them were impressed by the French painters. She recalled: “When I was with Kandinsky in Sèvres from 1906-07, Kandinsky didn’t look for Matisse, Picasso or any other greats.” However, she discovered woodcuts and linocuts for herself, which she perfected together with Kandinsky. A quarter of her graphic work was thus created in France.

The Blaue Reiter

In 1909 Gabriele Münter and her partner Wassily Kandinsky moved to Murnau in Upper Bavaria, together with their artist colleagues Alexej Jawlensky and Marianne von Werefkin. Gabriele Münter’s language of expression changed in Murnau through the influence of the Fauvists, the collaboration with Kandinsky and especially through the works of Jawlensky from Impressionist to Expressionist painting, which is expressed in the simplification of the formal language and individual coloring in bright and fresh colours. Back in Munich, together with other artists, they founded the “Neue Künstlervereinigung München”, from which Münter, Kandinsky, Werefkin, Jawlensky and Marc withdrew in 1911 and founded the “Blauer Reiter”.

Sweden

During the First World War, Münter first emigrated to Switzerland with Kandinsky, then to Sweden alone. In Sweden she made contact with the Swedish art scene and exhibited a number of times. In 1915 she organized an exhibition for Kandinsky, who two years later broke off contact with her.

The 20s and 30s

In 1920 Münter returned to Germany. In the following years fewer works were created, which is always attributed to the separation with Kasndinsky and the reorientation in Germany. In 1927 she met the art historian and philosopher Johannes Eichner, who became her partner and agent. In her painting she mixed expressive and new objective elements. The 1930s were marked by a return to the early expressionist tradition from the “Blauer Reiter” period and by a new upswing in painting. Above all, a stay in Paris from October 1929 to June 1930 and a subsequent trip to southern France gave her painting decisive new impulses. In 1931, after years of wandering, Münter returned permanently to Murnau. Here she and her husband also spent the Nazi era and kept the pictures of their friends of the Blue Rider.

The late work

In her last creative years, Münter devoted herself to the flower still life, which became her central motif. Flowers were always to be found in their ensembles with folk art, as these were suitable to conform to the artistic design and to become carriers of the colored sounds. “Often only the main features of the bristling, stretched, clenched and fluttered flowers are left of the natural forms of flowers.” In the 1950s in particular, she devoted herself almost exclusively to still life. on cardboard or paper, mostly abstracted to geometric shapes – also in this floral still life.