Gabriele Münter had the misfortune of being the concubine of one of art history's all-too-big names, the Russian painter Vassily Kandinsky, the brilliant pioneer of abstraction. The effect of this companionship is that we can immediately situate her in a sort of slide show of art in the twentieth century.th century, but it also condemned her to struggle in the shadow of too strong a presence. Yet she was much more than a lover and muse: she was an important painter and printmaker, and the guardian of the very memory of Munich's pre-1914 avant-garde in the heart of Nazi Germany. An exhibition in Bern puts this artist back in the spotlight.
No one was better placed than Paul Klee Center to host this monographic exhibition. It should be remembered that it was precisely in the same environment that the early careers of Alexei von Jawlensky, Vassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Gabriele Münter and Marianne von Werefkin flourished. The setting is Munich, circa 1910, and the surrounding countryside. We find artists of different origins, many Russians and Germans (Klee was only half Swiss at the time, and only had a German passport). Love stories were formed that would later unravel. The Jawlensky-Werefkin couple fled to Switzerland, where they separated. She lived in Ascona, where her works can still be seen today. Only Klee remained with his wife until his death.
A discreet girl from a good family
Gabriele Münter was born in Berlin in 1877 to an American mother who died young and a German father. The family was well-to-do and always supported the young girl, who was very independent for having travelled the world from an early age. After her mother's death, Gabriele made a long trip to the USA to meet her cousins. She bought a camera and brought back pictures of Texas worthy of the greatest westerns. These photographs are presented in Bern in the first section of the exhibition. They would have determined her pictorial art, her science of framing. If this is difficult to prove, this prelude has the merit of making us measure the civilizational distance between his time and today. The problem with modern art is that it is eternally young and current. When we look at his landscapes of geometric mountains and red trees, they may have been painted yesterday, but they are ageless. The use of photography puts things into context.
Initially trained at the Düsseldorf Art School for Women, Münter moved to Munich at the age of 23. At the time, Munich was the capital of modernism in the German-speaking world, ahead of Berlin and Vienna. It also boasted the highest concentration of private academies per square metre. At one of these, Münter met Kandinsky, becoming his favorite pupil before the two fell in love. As he was married, the beginning was complicated. The lovers soon set off on a long journey that took them to Paris, the heart of another modernity, where they met Picasso and Matisse. They later travelled to Italy and Tunisia.
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We know that this very country, which he discovered a few years later, would act as an electroshock for Paul Klee. His palette opened up to ever more vibrant, vivid colors. Regrettably, this was not the case for Münter, who brought back paintings from this trip that look very dull by comparison. Not that his palette is dull, on the contrary, but it's as if the artist saw more light in the Bavarian Pre-Alps than on his trip to North Africa. A curious phenomenon.
The Adventure of the Blue Rider and the Invisible Woman
In Munich, Kandinsky, Klee and Jawlensky were neighbors, inviting each other to their homes and, of course, painting. The exhibition features a magnificent portrait of Marianne von Werefkin, another by Klee, with white pants on a blue sofa, one by Jawlensky, another engraved by Kandinsky. This small world, to which Franz Marc and Auguste Macke were added - but who were in Munich just passing through, not living there - formed the heart of the Blue rider.
This term refers to an avant-garde group that exhibited twice together and signed an almanac, a kind of illustrated magazine with theoretical texts and reproductions of works of art that was to mark the history of art publishing and modern art. It was the first time that modern works, primitive sculptures, naïve paintings and children's drawings had been published together and «on the same plane», a mishmash that held together only by its aesthetic qualities. Curiously, while Münter lives with her main author, rubbing shoulders with and photographing the protagonists, there are no works or texts of hers to be found in the almanac. Like the other female artist in the group, Marianne von Werefkin, she remains completely in the blind spot. Patriarchy weighs heavily, even within bohemia.
Then came the catastrophe of the First World War. Marc and Macke die in the war. Kandinsky had to return to Russia, while the Jawlensky-Werefkins fled to Switzerland. Gabriele Münter is asked to go to Scandinavia to wait for her lover. He comes only once for a stay, then leaves her without news. She was forced to turn over a new leaf and returned to Murnau alone, sending him some of the works left in their common home that he had claimed.
The weight of staying
Münter was the only artist from this intense period in the history of modern art to remain in Germany during the Third Reich. Klee, the only surviving German, fled to Switzerland in the 1930s. What does she do in the context of National Socialism? How does she cope? Is this not a blemish on her legacy? The exhibition doesn't go into much detail, other than to say that she continues to paint, even taking part in an exhibition praising Nazi workers. This in itself is damning, even if she doesn't seem to make too many stylistic concessions to the realism emblematic of totalitarianism. She remains herself, painting subjects in tune with the times, road builders. All the same, it's embarrassing. Nor does the exhibition show any work from the end of her life. Yet she died in the 1960s. Is her art going from bad to worse?
In short, an ambiguous destiny is presented to us in Berne. Right down to Münter herself, often photographed: she never smiles. This was certainly not the norm, but all the same, she gives off a cold, ghostly impression, in keeping with her story as a neglected woman and shadowy figure.
One point saves it, and Munich's citizens are happy about it today: peaceful and uneventful in the midst of a cruel regime, Münter harbored and preserved a modernist treasure trove. His cellars were filled with works not only by Kandinsky, but also by all his friends. These works, considered degenerate, could have been burned by the Nazis, as has happened elsewhere. So she is a heroine, a resistance fighter in spite of everything, just as her painting more than holds its own in the court of history. She hasn't aged a day.
«Gabriele Münter. Pioneer of Modern Art», at the Paul Klee Center until May 8, 2022
Yves Guignard is an art historian. Archivist in charge of the Fonds Balthus, he is the author of a book on Coghuf and a contributor to the collective work Entre arts et lettres - Three centuries of cultural influence around Vevey and Montreux.
Header image: Gabriele Münter, Aurélie, 1906, coloured linocut on Japanese paper, 18.7 x 17 cm, Stadtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus and Kunstbau München, Gabriele Münter Stiftung, 1957 © 2021, ProLitteris, Zurich
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