Material gouache on cardboard
Dimensions 7 × 9 cm
Place of Creation Murnau am Staffelsee
Price Available upon inquiry
Status Vetted

About the Work

These four small works on paper, created in 1912, represent a singular concentration of Gabriele Münter’s pictorial language during her Murnau years. Executed in gouache on dark-toned paper, they employ a reduced format that intensifies the impact of color and form. Motifs familiar from Münter’s oeuvre—a flower still life, a village street, a lakeside scene, and a fountain at night—are here condensed into self-contained tableaux. Their diminutive scale invites close inspection, creating an intimate encounter that contrasts with the more expansive canvases of the same period.


The immediacy of the color, applied in broad, unmodulated planes, and the radical simplification of form reflect Münter’s central role within the Blauer Reiter circle. Like Kandinsky, Jawlensky, and Marc, she sought to move beyond naturalistic description toward an expressive, almost spiritual use of color. Yet in these “Puppenstubenbilder” she achieves this aim through a particularly personal idiom, one that combines clarity of design with a childlike directness. What appears naïve at first glance is revealed as a deliberate aesthetic choice, aligning with the group’s appreciation of folk art, children’s drawings, and so-called “primitive” forms as authentic vehicles of expression.


Shown together, these four works embody the radical exploration of new pictorial possibilities that defined the Blauer Reiter. In miniature, Münter articulated a vision that was both intensely private and aligned with the wider search for a modernist vocabulary capable of conveying inner experience.

Show moreless

Provenance

Leonard Hutton Galleries, New York
Ahlers Collection, North Rhine-Westfalia (acquired in the above mentioned gallery in 1985)
Franz Marc Museum, Kochel am See (permanent loan from the ahlers collection, 2017-2025)

Literature

Gabriele Münter und die Kinderwelt, ed. by G. Kleine, Frankfurt / Leipzig 1997, p. 81
Gabriele Münter: Malen ohne Umschweife, Exhib. cat. Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus / Louisiana Museum of Modern Art / Museum Ludwig, Munich / Humlebaek / Cologne 2017, cat. ill. p. 143 ill. D
Gabriele Münter: Retrospective, Exh. cat. Leopold Museum, Vienna 2023, cat. ill. p. 156.

View artwork at TEFAF Maastricht 2026

View Full Floorplan