Gabriele Münter

Wassily Kandinsky, Gabriele Münter, 1905

• There were many romantic relationships between artists in art history, and they are mostly described in a manner where men are the famous ones, the initiators, the inventors, while female artists are simply their followers, their pale shadows. The true influence of females in such relationships are hard to determine sometimes, and there is always controversy involved, as in the case of Gabriele Münter and her tutor and lover Wassily Kandinsky.

• Gabriele (born in Berlin, 19th February 1877 - died in Murnau am Staffelsee, 19th May 1962) was a German expressionist painter prevented from attending state art academies because of her gender, so she therefore went to the Damen Kunstschule (Art School for Ladies) in Düsseldorf. Being quite unsatisfied with the scarce training, and being pushed by her ambitions to become more than an art teacher, she entered the newly opened Phalanx School under Wassily Kandinsky.

• Gabriele studied sculpture, printmaking and painting there and became intimately involved with her mentor, with whom she travelled to Holland, Italy and France. She met important artists of the period like Henri Rousseau and Henri Matisse, who influenced her work, becoming less Impressionist in spirit and more akin to Fauvism and later Expressionism. She also began painting glass in 1909, introducing this unusual medium, which would later also be appealing to Kandinsky, Franz Marc, August Macke, Heinrich Campendonk, etc.

Gabriele Münter, Kandinsky and Erma Bossi at the Table in the Murnau House (oil on canvas), 1912

• Unlike Kandinsky's “abstract pursuits”, Gabriele's art remained rooted in the figurative world, even though stripped to the basics in its stylization.

Gabriele Münter, Portrait of Wassily Kandinsky (colour woodcut), 1906

• Gabriele was a member and co-founder of the Neue Künstlervereinigung (New Artists' Association) and Der Blaue Reiter (the Blue Rider) (1911-1914).

• During WWI after seeking refuge in Switzerland, the couple went their separate ways. During WWII Gabriele hid works of the Expressionists from the Nazis, who generally considered modern art as 'degenerate'.

• Gabriele Münter made no theoretical claims for helping with the establishment of the Expressionist style, and therefore her exact role is rather vague; however, that fact tells me of her greatness both as a human being and as an artist, for art shouldn't be somebody's property, but a source of enjoyment for both the creator and the observer.

Gabriele Münter, Staffelsee in Autumn (oil on board), 1923