Gabriele Münter

Gabriele Münter (1877-1962) was one of the founders of The Blue Rider [Der Blaue Reiter], the legendary group of Expressionist artists based in Munich. With their precise lines and intense colours, the works of this German painter envelop the viewer in her private world. Through her acute gaze, lovers, friends, everyday objects, landscapes and Münter herself are refined to their essence.

The exhibition, which includes more than one hundred paintings, drawings, prints and photographs, aims to reveal an artist who rebelled against the limits imposed on women of her day and who succeeded in becoming one of the most notable figures of German Expressionism in the early 20^th century. It opens with an extensive section devoted to the start of Münter’s activities as an amateur photographer, analysing the way in which her relationship with this modern medium of expression, which was less codified than the traditional fine arts, was fundamental for her subsequent development. The exhibition continues with a focus on her pictorial activity through a chronological-thematic survey which starts with works executed during the artist’s travels around Europe and North Africa with her partner Wassily Kandinsky, followed by a large section on masterpieces by Münter from the Blue Rider period. The final section centres on her exile in Scandinavia during World War I and the different expressive pathways that she pursued following her return to Germany. Over the course of her career Münter frequently demonstrated her powers of adaptation, her tireless desire to experiment and her unprejudiced attitude towards the new and the different.

The exhibition aims to reveal the rich complexity of an artist who is well known in Germany but has only started to acquire greater status in the rest of Europe in recent years. Housing four of her works in its permanent collections, the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza is now holding the first retrospective on the artist in Spain, thus continuing with its endeavour of researching and promoting the work of many great women artists and the place they merit in history.

The Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza is collaborating on this project with the Gabriele Münter-und Johannes Eichner-Stiftung and the Städtische Galerie am Lenbachhabus und Kunstbau in Munich. After its Madrid showing a modified version will be seen at the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris.