Gabriele Münter
1877-1962
Gabriele Münter was an Expressionist painter and a member of the New Munich Artists' Association but did not belong to the Blaue Reiter movement.
Gabriele Münter became known as Wassily Kandinsky's companion. She saved a significant part of his works through the war and post-war period and later made them known to the public, together with paintings by artist friends of the Blaue Reiter and her own works.
When Gabriele Münter bought a house in Murnau in 1909, which she lived in during the summer with her partner Kandinsky, the idyllically situated domicile soon developed into a centre of the avant-garde. Marc, Macke and Werefkin, Jawlensky were regular guests. They all found much inspiration for their artistic work in the area around the Staffelsee – art history likes to describe these years surrounding the founding of the Blaue Reiter as the "Murnau period".
With the beginning of the First World War and the separation from Kandinsky, turbulent years followed for Münter. In 1931, she moved to Murnau for good. The landscape in the foothills of the Bavarian Alps plays a major role in her work from this period, as it did at the beginning of the century. When Münter died in Murnau in 1962, she had long been considered, along with Paula Modersohn-Becker, the most important Expressionist painter.
