Sale: 428 / Modern Art, Dec. 03./05. 2015 in Munich Lot 214

 

214
Gabriele Münter
Stillleben im Kreis, 1911.
Oil on cardboard
Estimate:
€ 150,000 / $ 160,500
Sold:
€ 375,000 / $ 401,250

(incl. surcharge)
Stillleben im Kreis. 1911.
Oil on cardboard.
Signed and dated lower right. Rear signed, titled and inscribed: "Nature morte" (crossed out). 84.5 x 70 cm (33.2 x 27.5 in).
Rear: Remains of a label inscribed in Cyrilic.
Important still life from a series of similar subjects.
Accompanied by a written expertise issued by the Gabriele Münter- and Johannes Eichner-Foundation from 27 October, 2015. The painting will be included into the catalog raisonné of paintings by Gabriele Münter with the title "Stilleben im Kreis".

PROVENANCE: Arthur Jerome Eddy, Chicago (acquired from the artist around 1913/14)
Jerome O. Eddy, Skull Valley, Arizona
Caroll Swawite
Robert Henry Adams Fine Art, Chicago, with gallery label on verso of covering board
Collection Harlan J. and Pamela M. Berk, Chicago
Private collection, U.S.A.
Collection Hildegard Auer, Upper Palatinate.

EXHIBITION: Gabriele Münter (1904-1913) group exhibition, Der neue Kunstsalon Max Dietzel, Munich, March-April 1913, leaflet, no. 23. Further stops of the traveling exhibition until 1914 in: Frankfurt/M, Dresden, Stuttgart, Fürth, Erlangen and Augsburg
Gabriele Münter 1877 - 1962 Retrospective. Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, 29 July - 1st November, 1992/Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt/Main, 29 November, 1992 - 10 February 1993, cat. no. 92 with full-page color plate no. 92, pp.41, 49 with illu. 5, p. 57 illu.14.
Wassily Kandinsky, Gabriele Münter 1901-1917. The Miyagi Museum of Art, Sedai/Sezon Museum of Art,Tokyo/Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art, Nagoya/Museum of Contemporary Art, Sapporo, 1996/97, cat. no. 92 with full-page color plate
The Years of Expressionism, 1903-1920. Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 5 December, 1997 - 1st March, 1998/Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, Ohio, 18 April - 21st June, 1998/ Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, Virginia, 13 July - 20 September, 1998/Marion Koogler Mc Nay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas 3 November, 1998 - 3 January, 1999, cat. no. 52 with full-page color plate on p. 96.

LITERATURE: Karoline Hille, Gabriele Münter. Die Künstlerin mit der Zauberhand, Cologne 2012, p. 102-104.
Cathrin Klingsöhr-Leroy, Der große Widerspruch. Franz Marc zwischen Delaunay und Rousseau, Munich 2009, p. 88 with color illu. 5 on p. 89.
Art Auction. Extraordinary Collection of One Hundred and Ten Modernistic Paitings and Antique Oriental Rugs. Williams, Barker & Severn Co., 20.-1. 1937, cat. no. 115 (title: Two Women and Tree)
Reinhold Heller: Erlebnis, Erinnerung und Synthese in der Kunst Gabriele Münters, in: Gabriele Münter. Ex. cat., Munich/Frankfurt/Main 1992/93, p. 49 with illu. 5 and p. 57 illu. 14 (illu. of still life in the Munich exhibition from 1913) .

Her partnership with Wassily Kandinsky had great, however, not decisve influence on Gabriele Münter's creation. Particularly after Kandinsky had turned to pure abstraction, Münter realized that she would not pursue this path. Apart from several attempts, abstract compositions are a marginal phenomenon in her work. What is interesting, though, is the approach that Münter learned from Kandinsky. From a representational composition abstraction is kind of carved out as meaning and is formed to become an independent composition, that, as it is the case with our work, is just a slight reminiscence of the model. What else is remarkable is the long period of time that lies between figurative composition and its conversion into abstraction.
In the painting "Stilleben im Kreis" Gabriele Münter remains within the frame of her compository approaches. The domestic inventory, preferrably objects from her rich collection of folk art, are part of the still life formed in the painter's sense. Based on her studies of rural reverse glass painting, which Gabriele Münter and Wassily Kandinsky had discovered as a source of artistic inspiration, this still life also shows references, both formal ones as well as with regards to content, to this folk art. But the composition's arrangement in an oval hints at the intention to fathom another dimension of meaning behind the mere folkloristic motif. A dimension that does not exclude spiritualism. A conception that is rather rare in her oeuvre, as the reality of things is the most decisive factor for her perspective.



214
Gabriele Münter
Stillleben im Kreis, 1911.
Oil on cardboard
Estimate:
€ 150,000 / $ 160,500
Sold:
€ 375,000 / $ 401,250

(incl. surcharge)