Gabriele Münter (1877-1962)

Gabriele Münter

Wonderful Female Painters

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Gabriele Münter (1877-1962)

Breakfast of the Birds (1934)

Gabriele is known for her participation in the Expressionist group The Blue Rider.

Her style tends to abstraction, to simplification, with strong, pure colors in areas well delimited by a thick outline, inherited from Post-impressionist Cloisonnism (the technique of “compartmentalizing” colors inspired by medieval stained glass, which Anquetin and Bernard developed, and Gauguin and Van Gogh made popular).

She is also known for her relationship with Kandinsky for several years.

But above all, the history of art is indebted to her for saving a very important legacy of “degenerate” art. That was how the Nazis called everything that they did not understand and, of course, tried to destroy.

In 1937, the Nazis closed an exhibition where Münter exhibited her works. The persecution of avant-garde artists had begun. Nazi ultranationalism had no idea that what was thought to be contrary to the German spirit —specifically Expressionism— is today the reflection of the true German spirit, so full of feeling.

Münter had about 80 paintings and 300 drawings of the Blue Rider group, most of them by Kandinsky. She hid them in the basement of her house, the entrance to which she hid, and she did it so well that those who went to confiscate the works of art failed to find anything. And they went more than once.

But this image of a heroine of art history becomes even stronger when we understand that, despite her economic difficulties (due to her inability to work because she was outlawed) and the terrible general crisis during the war and post-war period, Gabriele did not get rid of any of the works she secretly treasured, which were already valuable at that time. She resisted for years and gave the city of Munich and humanity one of the best collections of Expressionist art in the world.

Recommended links:

Expressionism.

Characteristic Elements of Expressionist Painting.

The Avant-garde Movements.

Timeline: Moments of Kandinsky.

Kandinsky at the Bauhaus.

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