Gabriele Münter’s creations from around 1910 are characterized by a fundamental stylistic renewal. Together with Wassily Kandinsky, she found a place in Murnau where her creativity could flourish. Impressions of her surroundings and intense exchanges within the circle of artists led to an increasingly independent conception of form and color. In 1909, Münter bought a house in Murnau that became known as the “Russenhaus” (Russian House) and gave the artist couple an important place to live and work. Their stable living situation and joint work fostered new means of expression. That same year, Münter and Kandinsky, along with Marianne von Werefkin and Alexej von Jawlensky, founded the “New Artists’ Association of Munich.” Between her stays in Murnau, Münter frequently worked in her Munich apartment, where she created numerous still lifes in 1910. Following tensions within the artists’ association, Münter, Kandinsky, Franz Marc, and other artists founded the “Blue Rider” in 1911. This marked an important, formative, and productive creative phase that lasted until the outbreak of war in 1914.

Against this backdrop, the “Still Life with Sunflowers” stands as a striking testament to Münter’s creative breakthrough. The painting, which can be dated to around 1910, impresses with its high degree of abstraction. In the highly stylized, almost geometric composition, the few still-life objects are barely recognizable. The highly abstracted sunflowers are reduced to their basic form and can be identified only on that basis. The flowers are arranged in two vases, which in turn consist solely of blocks of blue. They are set on a color field resembling a table, which, together with the background behind the arrangement, narrows to a point, thereby creating a unique spatial effect that oscillates between an implied and a dissolved space. The color fields stand side by side as equals and exert an immediate impact. In this still life, Münter not only plays with geometric planes but also with their contrasts. This impression is reinforced by the bold black outlines, which can certainly be understood as a reminiscence of her reverse-glass painting. With these contours, she creates a powerful composition characterized by great cohesion and heightened expression.

In this work, Gabriele Münter pursues her expressive style with particular consistency. The surfaces are strictly arranged, the contrasts sharpened, and the sunflowers reduced to their essence. The motif is not merely simplified but increasingly dematerialized. With a sure sense of form, color, and surface, the artist transforms a familiar subject into an independent, highly expressive visual composition. [AW]