Disappearing into clouds, flying through the air, and flowing into the breeze through Gabriele Münter’s art is an exceptional and careful ride. In all of the paintings of the artist, she moved the storms across the countryside or took up even the highest mountains, roofs, and garden walls. There is a rhythmic balance and excitement in the lines sweeping across her canvas, but despite its overall impression of stability, every single part of the composition is immovable. The strong black contours provide a solidity and clear structure to several figures in them, further forming a framework. Münter expressed the impressions she had in her life through her paintings, which she orchestrated through the planes of color clashes. But because she conveniently added particular details and naturalistic nuances of color, the impressions of her painting heightened. Being an artist of early modernism, she received sincere academic attention only in the last few years. It’s because art-historical narratives have consigned her role as a mere muse or companion of Wassily Kandinsky. In this article, I will share everything you need to know about Gabriele Münter, giving her a tribute rather than just informing about her.
Note: To comply with copyright laws, this article provides links to the artist’s works rather than displaying the images directly within the content.
Gabriele Münter | Fast Knowledge
Gabriele Münter was a german artist who received art training in Dusseldorf under Ernst Bosch and Willy Platz. Inspired by the Bavarian folk art, she produced panels of ‘verre églomisé.’ With her colorful landscapes and still life, she was one of the most significant Expressionist female painters.
Artist Abstract: Gabriele Münter.
With 160 paintings, 30 graphics and 60 drawings, Münter was one of the most emblematic woman artists of her time. One of the most significant points to note is her status, which was problematic concerning society in general and the avant-garde communities she worked in. Coming from an upper-middle-class family and Protestant background, she lived with a married, albeit separated, man, eleven years her senior, and, most importantly, her tutor. She remained childless and career-oriented, refusing to subordinate herself to any kind of relationship. Several self-portraits tell about the conflict she had between ‘artist’ and ‘woman’ as if the artist negotiated her self-identity between these two words.
Johannes Eichner gave the psychological and artistic character of the Münter’s temperament, which defines her artistic statement. I will tell you all about her in the later sections of the article.
About the Artist’s Life and Art.
A well-travelled and an independent artist who was driven by such passion that she surrendered her life to work. Gabriele Münter started practicing drawing at an early stage. Being the youngest member in the family, she had the opportunity to make her art as a profession, but she did not want to get engaged in the usual constraints of the traditional art academies. Hence, in 1902, she enrolled at the Phalanx School in Munich, which was known for its innovative teaching methods. There, she met Wassily Kandinsky, a person who would play an important role in her life.
Chapter 1.
Her initial training here encouraged her in the in situ landscape painting. Then, on Kandinsky’s advice, her early works followed a limited color range of yellows, greens, and browns with extensive use of a palette knife. Münter interpreted this genre till she reached climax in the Murnau period.
Did You Know?
Between the late 19th century and the early 20th century, the period in which the art flourished around the town of Murnau in Bavaria, Germany, is referred to as the Murnau Period. It is closely associated with artists like Wassily Kandinsky, Gabriele Münter, Alexej von Jawlensky, and Marianne von Werefkin and is known for its shift from expressionism to abstract art.
In the company of Kandinsky, Marianne Werefkin, and Jawlensky, Münter abandoned the plein-air, Impressionist qualities of her Sevres sojourn to know the values of Synthetism. In this period, they used an unusual pattern of blue, green, yellow, pink, with red for emphasis, on diverse surfaces. While Münter followed similar traditions, she bound together her figures with strong contours which can be seen through her painting, Landscape With Hut in the Sunset (1908).
Gabriele Münter’s paintings at this time were majorly small-scale oil on board and they served as an increasing stimulus for technical radicalism for Münter to find a way between Jawlensky’s Matisse-linked modernism and inspiration of folk art. Though the landscape paintings of the artist show similar and usual elements, there is a retention of freshness of the visual encounter and several other elements of surprise and pleasure for the viewer.
Chapter 2.
According to Münter, Jawlensky brought her attention to the Bavarian and Bohemian glass painting technique, called by the name, Hinterglassmalerei (painting behind glass). During this time, Münter started to experiment with the technique to form her own collection through copying the traditional examples of this form. She further acquired the necessary skills of the technique from Heinrich Rambold, a glass painter from Murnau.
When we look at her painting, Still Life With St George (1911, oil on board, Stadtishche Galerie in Lenbachhaus), we witness a combination of a motley assortment of images: a small statue of the Virgin, a flower Vase, and then a glass painting of St George over a hazy aura on the left side of the canvas. One of the interesting points to note about this painting is that the artist didn’t use the usual narrative sequences, and instead, the votive objects are animated by inconsistent effects of lightning. Hence, she used these methods with the motifs of folk art, to further implicate herself in the Western phenomenon of modernism primitivism; a trend that led transformation of the artifacts’ inspiration from the primitive societies into the departure for autonomous art.
If we talk about the perception of the artist’s work, it is a noteworthy point how Münter’s production escaped critical understanding of women creativity as the remaining in the realm of matter. However, she was never capable of approaching male artist’s sublimation of the primitive into high art. Interestingly, she deployed several referents in an ironic and potentially subversive depiction of the domestic and private sphere of womanhood. When we look at her works, such as Kandinsky at the Tea-Table and Kandinsky and Erma Bossi at the Table, there is a demonstration of the artist’s interest in juxtaposing animated still-life objects with the figures that are frozen in action.
In another painting, Man in Chair from 1913 (Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Munich), Münter portrayed Paul Klee wedged into an armchair set against an emerald green rear wall of Kandinsky and Münter’s apartment. While his legs are shown in white shimmering trousers, his upper torso has a stiff black jacket that is displayed frontally and comically. On the same level of his intense gaze, there are dramatic arrangements of Bavarian Hinterglabilder and folk art figurines that engage attention of the viewer for some moment. We see there is a continuous interference in her artwork alongside the awkwardness of her sitter’s countenance. This subverts the assumption of masculine control of the domestic and private spaces as well. There is a paradoxical tension in the Münter’s works which is “an awareness of feminist ideas counteracted by an apparent obsession with domesticity.”
One of the letters of the artist from December 1910 reads,
“Wanted to read in the afternoon- the philosophy of the feminist lessing- a new book ‘Weib, Frau, Dame’ but the phonograph was going across the street… – so I did some sewing and ironing- I always have my things quite tidy.”
Significantly, this letter shows the influence of feminism in her art. And this was more evident in her canvases as she depicted a series of women in interiors, focusing on the themes of isolation, illness, and reverie.
Chapter 3.
Unlike the previous canvases where the primitivist and mystical undertonnes were dominant, this period (1915-17) consisted of Swedish portraits with an attention on the contemplative mood, short-hair styles, and reform dress of the early 20th century womanhood. Some of the compositions from this period are Reflection (1917) and Future (1917). Both of these compositions further have a similarity, the bust-length figure poses in front of the window, reinforcing a contrast between the outer and inner world. Münter emphasized this gap or contrast through the use of black and white contrasts with the variations of the primary colors- red, yellow and blue with powerful strokes.
While these works were for the open market, Gabriele Münter sought portrait commissions. In the Portrait of Anna Roslund, Münter composed a three-quarter length figure of Anna, the younger sister of Nell Walden. Anna was a writer and musician so Münter represented her as a pipe-smoking and musing figure as a conventional metaphor for strong and creative womanhood. This new woman she showed during this period was about the confidence that a woman has through her talent.
Another painting, Reflection II, shows the full-length seated figure with crossed legs in profile. The upper part of the body faces the viewer while the head rests on the figure’s hand. Though Münter used two-dimensionality here, the chair casts shadows within the shallow space as Münter explored three-dimensional volumes through red and ochre tonalities.
Chapter 4.
In her last works after World War II, she focuses on fewer genres: landscape, still life, and interior scenes that further reassess her transformation of figurative and narrative material throughout her entire body of work. This periods shows one more thing, her remarkable independence from Kandinsky’s methods which made her abstractions more mesmerising and inventive.
Final Words.
Though the name Gabriele Münter has been associated with Kandinsky, she never ceased to innovate, bringing forward modernity in her wide range of works. Definitely she had a great life as she was dedicated towards her work, which led her career span for more than 60 years. Personally, I found the paintings of the artist unexpected and daring which is exemplified through the use of bright colors to give them a symbolic and almost poetic intensity.
Resources.
- Dictionary of Women Artists by Delia Gaze.
- Gabriele Münter Peindre sans détours by Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris.
- Featured Image: Portrait of Gabriele Münter by Wassily Kandinsky; Wassily Kandinsky, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
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