Gabriele Münter: Paintings of home

Murnau, 1933

I bought a 2011 calendar by teNeues this week, featuring covers of Vogue from the ‘NineTeens’, Twenties and Thirties. I was tempted to buy one of the enormous art calendars – beautiful posters with a few tiny numbers at the bottom – but was deterred by both the price ($65) and the impracticality, as I like to be able to write on the days.

However, the ones I was admiring featured the work of the German artist Gabriele Münter (1877–1962). Surprisingly, she was not an artist I was familiar with from my art school days, and I am embarrassed to admit I only discovered her work via a calendar a few years ago!

‘Farmhouse On a Hill’, 1908In 1911 Münter, along with Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc founded the avant-garde expressionist group known as Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider). Prior to this she lived for a long while in the Bavarian market town of Murnau, where many of her landscape paintings were created, placing an emphasis of nature and opposing German modernity.

It is these serene landscapes that I particularly love: the uncomplicated, stylised shapes that are usually thickly outlined; the gorgeous colour palette and homely scenes. I find them comforting, soothing, as though I could step into Münter’s canvases and come home. 

‘Blue Mountain’, 1909