By now, we all know the all-too-familiar story of female artists being overshadowed by their male counterparts: Max Ernst’s Leonora Carrington and Dorothea Tanning, Edward Hopper’s Jo Hopper, Jean Arp’s Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Picasso’s Dora Maar and Françoise Gilot, Rodin’s Camille Claudel—the list goes on. Added to this genealogy was Gabriele Münter (1877-1962), who built a long relationship with Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944). Now finally, he has been given his chance in the exhibition at the Guggenheim, “Gabriele Münter: Contours of a World.”
Münter was one of the founders of the Blue Rider Group (Der Blaue Reiter), active from 1911-1914, along with Kandinsky, Franz Marc, Marianne von Werefkin and August Macke. The group wanted to use color as a way to express inner feelings rather than a tool to describe things. Encouraged by Münter, Kandinsky pushed completely into abstraction, while Münter continued to explore expression in color and concrete in places, in form and in power and life. Kandinsky, a former theologian, wrote, “Color is a force that directly influences the soul. Color is the keyboard, eyes are hammers, the soul is a hammer with many strings. The artist is a playing hand, touching one key to another, to cause the soul to vibrate.” Münter, in contrast, laid out his approach in a clear way, saying, “I take out the elements that express reality and express them simply, to the point, without exaggeration…”
Born in Berlin and raised in Murnau, Germany, Münter was a talented and restless musician. At the age of 21, he started working as a photographer. While visiting the US to see relatives, he bought a camera No. 2 Bull’s-Eye Kodak. An avid cyclist, he appreciated the freedom of travel it afforded him, photographing throughout Arkansas, Missouri and Texas. He held the camera at eye level and not at waist level, as Kodak recommended, and by the time he returned to Germany, he had produced over 400 exposures. His portraits of Black communities, street children, midwestern flatlands, women strolling in fancy dress and intimate family gatherings reveal a sophisticated sense of composition, an ability to gain the trust of his subjects and a willingness to leave his dignity visible within the frame.
In Munich, Münter met Kandinsky while in his life drawing class and later trained with him as a painter. They became a couple, despite his marriage to his cousin, which did not end until 1911. After two years together, they started traveling a lot and painting together. At this time, Münter gave up brushes and used a palette knife. Both had independent means and traveled to Tunisia, Italy and Paris, where they rented an apartment. There, Münter developed his printmaking practice, with six oil studies included in the main exhibition. After returning to Germany, he worked intensively on linocuts and woodcuts, while continuing to live and travel with Kandinsky.
Münter later bought a house in the countryside of Murnau, which he was forced to close when World War I broke out, an event that ended the Blue Rider Group. He went into exile in Stockholm, where he exhibited his work and organized a major Kandinsky exhibition. When he arrived for the opening in 1916, he was already married to another woman, and that was the last time the two saw each other. Münter continued to work relentlessly and eventually put on the largest solo exhibition of his career, presenting 120 works in a variety of mediums, including inverted glass paintings. He returned to Munich and Murnau, painting and exhibiting in Copenhagen, Berlin and Cologne. At the age of 50, she entered into a relationship with the philosopher and art historian Johannes Eichner, who became her partner and agent. When World War II broke out, Münter hid his large collection in the basement of his house in Murnau, including the works of the Blue Rider artists. In 1949, Eichner organized a retrospective of his work that toured 22 German cities over two years. They were together until his death in 1958; Münter died two years later at the age of 85.
Because of the great contribution of his work and that of other Blue Rider artists, primarily Kandinsky, Münter was long known primarily as a member of the group rather than as an individual. Yet his work testifies to a lifelong dedication to art in all mediums. Most of her life took place without Kandinsky, focusing on her work, yet she, like many female artists, was relegated to the shadow of a male partner. With the Guggenheim exhibition, he emerges unmistakably as an artist in his own right.
Münter never stopped trying. He photographed, drew regularly, made prints and stained glass paintings, embroidered, sculpted and painted in oils. At the Guggenheim, his work is full of color, revealing deep visual layers. She endured two World Wars, Kandinsky’s betrayal and entrenched prejudice against intellectual women. With this show, he’s not so much rediscovered as finally recognized for what he was.
“Gabriele Münter: Contours of a World” is at the Guggenheim in New York until April 26, 2026.
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