Biography
Along with Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc and Alexej Jawlensky, Gabriele Münter is one of the most important artists of the expressionist group "Der Blaue Reiter".
She was born in Berlin in 1877. The family moved to Herford and later to Koblenz. Her artistic talent was already evident during her school years; her mother allowed her private lessons and Münter also attended a ladies' art school in Düsseldorf. After the death of her wealthy father in 1896, she was financially independent. When her mother also passed away the following year, she and her sister went on a two-year trip to the United States beginning in 1899, during which they visited relatives. At the beginning of the trip, Gabriele Münter received a Kodak box camera from her sister. With this camera Münter photographed her surroundings and documented the trip. The photographs are surprising for their high artistic quality. Although Münter had not taken photographs before, one can recognize her sense of composition and capturing the motifs. After returning to Germany, Münter went to Munich to further her artistic education. Since women were not yet allowed to attend the art academy at this time, Münter initially studied at the Ladies' Academy of the Künstlerinnen-Verein, but soon switched to a private painting school. By winter 1901 she attended the "Phalanx" painting school to learn sculpture. In addition, she attended the course in nude drawing here, which was led by Wassily Kandinsky, who also led the painting class. During the painting class’ visit to Kallmünz in the summer of 1903, a relationship developed between Münter and her teacher Kandinsky, which was initially kept secret because Kandinsky was still married at the time. He even gave Münter a promise of marriage, which was to become important for the preservation of the early Expressionist works of art. After the love affair became public, Münter and Kandinsky decided to leave the painting school and Munich for an extended trip. Over the next 5 years they would visit the important centers of art, their studies taking them to the Netherlands, France, Italy and Tunisia, among other places. During these years, both were still painting in a late Impressionist style with thick, impasto application of paint and a quick sketchy style of painting. During this period Münter mostly drew and painted landscapes and cityscapes, but also took photographs, especially in Italy. In 1906/07 they both lived in Paris for over a year. Münter took painting classes and created numerous woodcuts and linocuts. She also participated in her first exhibitions during this time.
In 1908 Münter and Kandinsky returned to Munich and, at the suggestion of their friends Alexej Jawlensky and Marianne von Werefkin, took a summer painting trip to Murnau/Staffelsee. The four artists worked intensively and within a few days arrived at a new style and found Expressionism.
Münter recorded in her diary of the development: "After a short time of agony, I made a great leap - from painting nature - more or less impressionistically - to feeling a content, to abstracting - to giving an extract. (1) In Murnau, Münter and Kandinsky learned about Bavarian reverse glass painting, and from then on collected these paintings and took lessons from a local artist.
The following year Münter and Kandinsky returned to Murnau, Münter purchased a house that she owned until her death and where they both would spend the summer months until 1914.
In 1909 the Neue Künstler Vereinigung München (N.K.V.M.) was founded with other artists to exhibit the paintings that had been created in recent years. The group existed until 1911 and held three annual exhibitions, which were also shown in other cities in Germany and even in Moscow. Dissatisfied with the group's direction, Kandinsky resigned as chairman and in the summer of 1911 began working with Franz Marc on the almanac "Der Blaue Reiter“, which appeared in the spring of 1912. At the end of 1911, he, Marc, Münter, and other more progressive artists resigned from the N.K.V.M.. Shortly thereafter, the first exhibition of the new artists' group "Der Blaue Reiter" opened. With the beginning of World War I, Kandinsky had to leave Germany as a foreign citizen, and thus he traveled to Switzerland with Münter. Kandinsky went to Russia at the end of 1914, and Münter went to Sweden, where she made contacts with the art scene in Stockholm. At the end of 1915 Kandinsky came to Stockholm, where Münter had organized an exhibition for him, but left just a few weeks later to return to Moscow. In the course of 1917 Kandinsky broke off contact with Münter completely. The latter only learned years later that he had married his 2nd wife Nina at this time. At the end of the year Münter went to Denmark, where her largest exhibition to date with more than 120 works took place. With these shows, she is now celebrated by the public and critics as an influential and renowned avant-garde artist.
In 1920 Münter returned to Germany, first to Munich and Murnau, exhibiting at the Munich Neue Sezession, among other venues, as well as sporadically in other German cities. From 1925 she lived in Berlin, taking drawing lessons and making contacts with the art scene, but without being able to build on her reputation in Denmark or get exhibition opportunities. She learned in 1921 that Kandinsky was back in Germany and teaching at the Bauhaus in Weimar. He now demanded that Münter give back his personal belongings, which he had left behind in the house in Murnau, including many paintings. In a legal dispute over Kandinsky's unfulfilled marriage vows from 1903, which dragged on for years, Münter was finally awarded all of Kandinsky's works from the Munich and Murnau years.
In 1927 Münter met the philosopher and art historian Johannes Eichner, who encouraged and incited her to work more artistically again. Together they undertook a trip to France from late 1929 to 1931, including a stay in Paris for six months.
Münter then returned to Murnau, where she lived with Eichner in her house from 1936. She joined the "Reichskammer der bildeten Künste" to continue working and exhibiting. Thus she took part in an official Proganda exhibition on the occasion of the Olympic Games. As a result, she was the only artist of the "Blaue Reiter" not to be considered degenerate and could paint relatively unmolested during the Third Reich. In 1938, she hid her own paintings as well as Kandinsky's, but also works by Marc, Klee and other Expressionists in the cellar of the Murnau house, thus saving the artworks during National Socialism and the post-war period.
In the post-war period she continued her painting activities with flower still lifes, but also tried her hand at abstract compositions. She participated in the Biennale in 1950 and the first Documenta in 1955.
In 1957, on the occasion of her 80th birthday, she donated the Expressionist paintings, drawings and documents she had hidden in her cellar to the Munich Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, thus giving the museum the largest collection of the art of the "Blaue Reiter".
Gabriele Münter died in 1962 in Murnau and is buried in the cemetery there.
(1) Citation: Helmut Friedel, Annegret Hoberg (ed.): Der Blaue Reiter im Lenbachhaus München. 2. ed., Munich 2014, p. 202.
If you would like to sell artworks by Gabriele Münter in one of our auctions, please contact our expert Laura Hille at l.hille@quittenbaum.de.
