A founding member of the German Expressionist group Der Blaue Reiter, the Berlin-born Gabriele Münter made a great leap forward when she moved to the rural village of Murnau with Vassily Kandinsky in 1908. It was in this southern Bavarian town, whose main street is pictured here with Münter’s characteristically vibrant color and reductive forms, where the birth of German Expressionism took place. Several long visits by Alexei Jawlensky, among others, inspired the painter to move beyond copying nature to “take a great leap forward,” as she termed it, “to abstraction, feeling the content, the essence of things.” The striking jewel tones and black outlined forms of her painting recall a kind of folk art painting that both she and Kandinsky experimented with while in Murnau, a method in which painting was done on the underside of a sheet of glass. Münter’s unique use of illustrative color along with the meaningful connection to primitive German culture situated her work at the heart of the German Expressionist movement.
Details
- Artist Name: Gabriele Münter (German, 1877-1962)
- Title: Lower Main Street, Murnau
- Date: 1910
- Medium: Oil on textured cardboard
- Dimensions: 16-1/4 x 13-3/8 in. (41.3 x 34.0 cm)
- Credit Line: Norton Simon Museum, Gift of Mr. David Gensburg
- Accession Number: P.1970.19
- Copyright: © 2017 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn Reproduction, including downloading of ARS works is prohibited by copyright laws and international conventions without the express written permission of Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Object Information
Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus (Städtische Münter- und Johannes Eichner-Stiftung).
Private Collection, Northamptonshire, England, by 1960 (sale, Bern, Kornfeld und Klipstein, 11 June 1969, lot 951, for Sf 34,000, to);
O. P. Reed.
David Gensburg, Beverly Hills, California, gift December 1970 to;
Pasadena Art Museum, 1970-1975;
Norton Simon Museum.
The Blue Rider Group: An Exhibition sponsored by teh Edinburgh Festival Society and arranged jointly with the Royal Scottish Academy and the Arts Council of Great Britain
- Scottish Royal Academy, 1960 to 1960
German Expressionist Painting and Sculptures from California Collections
- Pasadena Museum of Modern Art, 1974-04-16 to 1974-06-02
Der Sturm
- Berlin, to
Permanent and Loan Collection, 1973
- Pasadena Museum of Modern Art, 1973-01-30 to 1973-12-31
- Kornfeld und Klipstein, Moderne Kunst, Des Neunzehnten und Zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts, 1969,
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