Studie auf Blau. 1915.
Oil on canvas.
With estate stamp on verso and with an adhesive label with the estate number "V 9", partly by hand and partly stamped as well as with another label with the stamped number "1358". With inscription "G Münter 1915 Studie auf Blau" on stretcher. 40,5 x 52,8 cm (15,9 x 20,7 in).

Accompanied by a written expertise issued by the Gabriele Münter- and Johannes Eichner-Foundation, Munich, dated 10. December, 2012. The work will be included into the catalog raisonné of Gabriele Münter's paintings.

PROVENANCE: Galerie Norbert Blaeser, Düsseldorf (there acquired from the owner in the 1980s).
Private Collection Hesse.

Gabriele Münter received her first art lessons at the 'Damen-Kunstschule' (Ladies Art School) in Düsseldorf and then attended the Society of Woman Artists as M. Dasio's and A. Jank's pupil. Then she went to Munich where she visited the private art school 'Phalanx' which was run by Wassily Kandinsky. In 1904 Münter and Kandinsky began travelling together: to Holland, Italy, France - where they met Rousseau and Matisse - and elsewhere. Stylistically she now distanced herself from Impressionism and her works began showing Fauve and Expressionist influences. In 1908 she and Kandinsky began leading a calmer life in their apartment in Munich. They often met with Klee, Marc, Macke, Jawlensky and Marianne von Werefkin. The country house Münter bought in Murnau provided an ideal working environment. In 1909 the artist began painting glass, a medium which would later also be adopted by Kandinsky, Marc, Macke and Campendonk. Münter was a member of the 'Neue Künstlervereinigung München' for two years and in 1911 she joined the 'Blaue Reiter', the artist group founded by Kandinsky and Marc. She was interested in Kandinsky's development towards abstract art, but her own works continued to be figurative. Her landscapes, figurative scenes and portraits show a reduction to the essential with an inclination towards humorous characterisation. When war broke out, Münter and Kandinsky at first moved to Switzerland. Münter, however, decided a year later to go to Stockholm, where she separated from Kandinsky.

Under the influence of Wassily Kandinsky Gabriele Münter also made several abstract works that, in their arrangement, entirely followed her concept of creating natural spaces. Accordingly, this work also possesses a spatial dimension that must be regarded an extension of the image area. What is particularly interesting is her recourse to the spatula technique that she had already applied in her early works which were still all in line with late Impressionism. Gabriele Münter deliberately was less occupied with abstraction, for her actual artistic path went a different direction. But yet, Münter`s abstract works are interesting as they still carry a fundamental trait of Münter`s art in general: She was a great colorist, realizing an enormous degree of the independence of colors. The balanced composition in a traditional manner shows nothing less but the fact that Münter never neglected what she had once acquired.

In late autumn 1917 she moved to Copenhagen. She travelled a lot during the 1920s and spent some time in Munich, Murnau, Cologne and Berlin. After 1931 she spent most of her time in Murnau and Munich. In 1956 she received the Culture Prize of the City of Munich. The year 1960 saw the first exhibition of Münter's work in the US, followed in 1961 by a large show in the Mannheim Kunsthalle. The artist died in her house at Murnau on 19 May 1962. [KD]