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Lot Essay
With her quintessential bold and broad, sweeping brushstrokes, Gabriele Münter confidently renders the present lot, Hütte am Moos. Painted circa 1910, Münter’s depiction of this house serenely positioned in the German country side reflects one of the artist’s most beloved subjects—landscape painting.
Münter was born to an upper-middle class family in Berlin in 1877 and developed an interest in art almost immediately. In 1902, at the age of 25, Münter enrolled at the Phalanx School in Munich, an avant-garde art institution founded by Russian artist Wassily Kandinsky. The director of the school at the time, Kandinsky was one of the first teachers who took Münter’s talents seriously, fostering both their professional and later personal relationship. In 1909, Münter served an instrumental role in establishing the expressionist Neue Künstlervereinigung München group, but left in 1911 to form the better known Der Blaue Reiter, alongside Kandinsky, Franz Marc, August Macke and Alexej von Jawlensky, amongst others. She was one of few women at the helm of this movement and is widely considered the most influential of the group.
Kandinsky’s influence on Münter’s style is palpable throughout her work in its instinctive and impulsive qualities. In an interview, Münter explained that her pictures consisted of “instantaneous visual experiences, generally noted very rapidly and spontaneously. When I begin to paint, it’s like leaping suddenly into deep waters, and I never know beforehand whether I will be able to swim” (quoted in E. Roditi, Dialogues: Conversations With European Artists at Mid-Century, San Francisco, 1990, p. 120). These virtues that Münter describes are easily felt in Hütte am Moos. The artist’s wide, long strokes convey an atmospheric time of day like dawn or dusk—inherently ephemeral and momentary. Unlike many artists who spent countless hours drafting and sketching their canvases, Münter rarely planned her composition before taking up the paintbrush. And as such, the sense of spontaneity the artist felt is innately reflected in her effortless and confident style. Her broad swathes of celestial blues across the sky in Hütte am Moos work certainly convey the momentary quality of a landscape.
Hütte am Moos further demonstrates a simplistic harmony amongst colors that distinguishes Münter’s style from artists like Kandinsky or Jawlensky. Her signature juxtaposition of bold, flattened colors achieve a difficult balance of simplicity without crossing into territory of severe austerity. Hütte am Moos also achieves Der Blaue Reiter’s ethos of separating painting from the literal—while landscapes might often be seen as exact representations of the world around us, Münter’s explorations of color belie this tenant and instead create a more spiritual and symbolic vision. Münter’s work truly embodies a revolutionary synthesis between the observable world and an expressive response to form and color.
Münter was born to an upper-middle class family in Berlin in 1877 and developed an interest in art almost immediately. In 1902, at the age of 25, Münter enrolled at the Phalanx School in Munich, an avant-garde art institution founded by Russian artist Wassily Kandinsky. The director of the school at the time, Kandinsky was one of the first teachers who took Münter’s talents seriously, fostering both their professional and later personal relationship. In 1909, Münter served an instrumental role in establishing the expressionist Neue Künstlervereinigung München group, but left in 1911 to form the better known Der Blaue Reiter, alongside Kandinsky, Franz Marc, August Macke and Alexej von Jawlensky, amongst others. She was one of few women at the helm of this movement and is widely considered the most influential of the group.
Kandinsky’s influence on Münter’s style is palpable throughout her work in its instinctive and impulsive qualities. In an interview, Münter explained that her pictures consisted of “instantaneous visual experiences, generally noted very rapidly and spontaneously. When I begin to paint, it’s like leaping suddenly into deep waters, and I never know beforehand whether I will be able to swim” (quoted in E. Roditi, Dialogues: Conversations With European Artists at Mid-Century, San Francisco, 1990, p. 120). These virtues that Münter describes are easily felt in Hütte am Moos. The artist’s wide, long strokes convey an atmospheric time of day like dawn or dusk—inherently ephemeral and momentary. Unlike many artists who spent countless hours drafting and sketching their canvases, Münter rarely planned her composition before taking up the paintbrush. And as such, the sense of spontaneity the artist felt is innately reflected in her effortless and confident style. Her broad swathes of celestial blues across the sky in Hütte am Moos work certainly convey the momentary quality of a landscape.
Hütte am Moos further demonstrates a simplistic harmony amongst colors that distinguishes Münter’s style from artists like Kandinsky or Jawlensky. Her signature juxtaposition of bold, flattened colors achieve a difficult balance of simplicity without crossing into territory of severe austerity. Hütte am Moos also achieves Der Blaue Reiter’s ethos of separating painting from the literal—while landscapes might often be seen as exact representations of the world around us, Münter’s explorations of color belie this tenant and instead create a more spiritual and symbolic vision. Münter’s work truly embodies a revolutionary synthesis between the observable world and an expressive response to form and color.