Many people associate the name Gabriele Münter with the genius Kandinsky, in whose shadow she lived for almost fifteen years due to a lack of self-confidence and the female role understanding of the time. Nevertheless, Gabriele Münter is one of the great artists of German modernism after 1900, alongside Paula Modersohn-Becker.
Gabriele Münter (1877-1962) spent her youth in Herford and Koblenz before studying art in Düsseldorf and later in Munich. At the private Phalanx art school in Munich, she met Wassily Kandinsky, with whom she soon developed a close personal relationship. Between 1903 and 1908, Münter and Kandinsky went on joint study trips through Europe and as far as North Africa. Back in Germany, Gabriele Münter spent the summer in Murnau am Staffelsee with her Russian painter colleagues Marianne von Werefkin and Alexej Jawlensky, where she continued to develop her artistic skills. In her Murnau Views, Münter abandoned the detailed spatula technique in favor of a more generous brushstroke. Attracted to her attention by Kandinsky, Gabriele Münter used her inheritance in 1909 to buy a house on Kottmüllerallee in Murnau, which she used as a summer house together with Wassily Kandinsky. The Russenhaus became a meeting place for the artistic avant-garde.
At the same time, Münter was working on the rural reverse glass painting that is typical of this region. The essence of this folk art, which is reduced to simple color and form structures, influenced the artist and showed her the way to a concise pictorial statement. The First World War ended this artistically productive period and also brought about her separation from Wassily Kandinsky. She stayed in Scandinavia for a few years, where she waited for Kandinsky to return to neutral ground and did not return to Germany until 1920. After stays in Berlin, Munich and at Elmau Castle, she moved to Berlin. On New Year's Eve 1928, she met Johannes Eichner. They formed a deep friendship. And finally Eichner was able to motivate her to make a new artistic start. A second creative phase began in Murnau in 1931.
After the Second World War, the artist was honored as a pioneer of modernism and an independent representative of expressionism. She had fought for this recognition for many years. Gabriele Münter died in 1962, at the age of eighty-five, in the Russenhaus in Murnau. Many of her works can be seen in the Murnau Castle Museum, the Münter House and the Municipal Gallery in the Lenbachhaus in Munich.