GABRIELE MUNTER, her quotes on painting landscape & life with Kandinsky in Murnau and the Blaue Reiter story; + biography of the German woman-artist
Gabriele Munter (German: Münter, (1877 – 1962) her quotes on landscape painting and life with Kandinsky by the German woman-artist in Blue Rider / Blaue Reiter – and on her life & biography facts. Gabriele Munter painted and lived with Kandinsky during their common ‘Murnau’ period 1908 – 1914. They painted a lot in open air together. Despite all kind of abstract elements Gabriele took over from Kandinsky, she kept on painting the landscape in a representational way, creating landscape paintings in powerful and colored forms, untill the end of her life. At the bottom short biography notes and useful art links for Gabriele Munter. – the editor.
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Gabriele Munter: ‘Landschaft mit Kirche’ 1910 |
Gabriele Munter, her woman artist quotes on painting landscape, Kandinsky and Blaue Reiter
– As I came to Munich in 1901 it was in a period of great artistic renewal. Jugendstil began in its way to attack the old naturalism and to cultivate the qualities of pure line.
* source, famous German people quotes: ”Kandinsky”, Frank Whitford, Paul Hamlyn Ltd, London 1967, p. 11 (famous German woman artist Gabriele Munter/ Münter; her woman artist quotes on life & creating expressive landscape paintings in Murnau; Blaue Reiter / Blue Rider)
– After a short period of agony, I took a great leap forward from copying nature, in a more or less impressionist style, to feeling the content of things (her comment on the change she made in the period of the Murnau landscape paintings from 1906 till 1910, she did together with Kandinsky, fh)
* source, famous German people life quotes: text in the exhibition ‘Die Blaue Reiter’, Gemeentemuseum the Hague, Netherlands 2010.
– When I came to the United States (in 1898, fh), I filled my sketchbook with drawings, very much as any educated girl of my generation might have kept a diary… …My American sketches were private notations of visual experiences which I wanted to fix on paper as a personal ‘momento’. (1958)
* source, famous German people life quotes: interview 1958; as quoted in ‘Dialogues – conversations with European Artists at Mid-century’ Edouard Roditi, Lund Humphries Publishers Ltd, London, 1990, p. 114.
– As a child, I devoted much of my leisure to drawing sketches of relatives and friends, familiar sights and scenes, a view that suddenly moved me or appealed to me. I always concentrated on depicting nature as I saw or felt it, in terms of lines, and obtaining a kind of psychological likeness which would convey the personality of my model or the mood of the moment. (1958)
* source, famous German people life quotes: 1958; as quoted in ‘Dialogues – conversations with European Artists at Mid-century’ Edouard Roditi, Lund Humphries Publishers Ltd, London, 1990, p. 114.
– I met him (Kandinsky, fh) shortly after my return to Germany from the United Sates. At first, I lived for a while in Bonn… …A year later, in 1901, I decided to move to Munich, but still found very little encouragement as an artist. German painters refused to believe that a woman could have real talent, and I was even denied access, as a student, to the Munich Academy… …It is significant that the first Munich artist who took the trouble to encourage me was Kandinsky, himself no German but a recent arrival from Russia. (1958)
* source, famous German people life quotes: interview 1958; as quoted in ‘Dialogues – conversations with European Artists at Mid-century’ Edouard Roditi, Lund Humphries Publishers Ltd, London, 1990, pp. 115-116.
– As a student of Franz von Stück he (Kandinsky, fh) still continued for a while to paint quite naturalistically. He admitted to me that he had always loved color, even as a child, far more than subject matter. Form and color were his main interests. To me he often remarked that ‘objects disturb me’. But he could paint portraits, too. (1958)
* source, famous German people life quotes: from interview 1958; as quoted in ‘Dialogues – conversations with European Artists at Mid-century’ Edouard Roditi, Lund Humphries Publishers Ltd, London, 1990, p. 116.
– We (Kandinsky and Gabriele Münter, fh) came here (in Murnau, fh) together, on a brief visit, for the first time in 1908, in June, and we were both delighted with the town and its surroundings. In August, we then returned to Murnau for two months, with Jawlensky and Marianne de Werefkin … …Kandinsky fell in love with it and said: ‘You must buy it for our old age’. So I bought it and we then made it our home until he returned to Russia in 1914. Jawlensky and Marianne used to stay with us here, and the people of Murnau called it: The House of the Russians’. (1958)
* source, famous German people life quotes: interview 1958; as quoted in ‘Dialogues – conversations with European Artists at Mid-century’ Edouard Roditi, Lund Humphries Publishers Ltd, London, 1990, p. 115.
– He (Kandinsky, fh) had always expressed a great interest in abstraction when we visited Tunisia together in 1904. The Moslem interdiction of representational painting seemed to stir his imagination and that was when I first heard him say that objects disturbed him. Between 190 and 1910 (the period in which Kandinsky painted his first abstract compositions, fh), he began to rely increasingly on his own theories of art, which many of his friends could understand only with great difficulty. (1958)
* source, famous German people life quotes: interview 1958; as quoted in ‘Dialogues – conversations with European Artists at Mid-century’ Edouard Roditi, Lund Humphries Publishers Ltd, London, 1990, p. 117.
– They (the master artists Kandinsky, Jawlensky and Paul Klee, fh) were constantly arguing about art and each of them, at first, had his own ideas and his own style. Jawlensky was far less intellectual than Kandinsky or Klee and was often frankly puzzled by their theories. My 1908 portrait entitled ‘Zuhören’ (Listening, fh) actually represents Jawlensky, with an expression of puzzled astonishment on his chubby face, listening to Kandinsky’s new theories of art. (1958)
* source, famous German people life quotes: interview 1958; as quoted in ‘Dialogues – conversations with European Artists at Mid-century’ Edouard Roditi, Lund Humphries Publishers Ltd, London, 1990, p. 117.
– As far as I am concerned, I learned this technique (the use of flat areas made in bright color, sometimes in contrasting juxtaposition, sometimes like pieces of colored glass in heavy dar outlines, fh) from Kandinsky and, at the same time, from the glass paintings of the Bavarian peasants of the Murneau area, who had painted for centuries in this style. (1958)
* source, famous German people life quotes: interview 1958; as quoted in ‘Dialogues – conversations with European Artists at Mid-century’ Edouard Roditi, Lund Humphries Publishers Ltd, London, 1990, p. 117.
– But we had no contact with the painters of the Dachau and Worpswede School (where a title=”art quotes by Paula Modersohn-Becker” href=”https://quotes-famous-artists.org/paula-modersohn-becker-famous-quotes”>Paula Modersohn Becker was settled as young woman artist, fh). It was only much later, for instance, that we discovered that Hoelzel had already been experimenting with non-objective compositions as early as 1908. We were only a group of friends who shared a common passion for painting as a form of self-expression.
* source, famous German people life quotes: interview 1958; as quoted in ‘Dialogues – conversations with European Artists at Mid-century’ Edouard Roditi, Lund Humphries Publishers Ltd, London, 1990, p. 117.
– Each of us (Blue Rider / Blaue Reiter artists, fh) was interested in the work of the other members of our group, much as each of us was also interested in the health and happiness of the others. But we were still far from considering ourselves as a group or a school of art… …I don’t think we were ever as programmatic in out theories, as competitive or a self-assertive, as some of the modern schools of Paris. (1958)
* source, famous German people life quotes: interview 1958; as quoted in ‘Dialogues – conversations with European Artists at Mid-century’ Edouard Roditi, Lund Humphries Publishers Ltd, London, 1990, p. 117.
– I have now forgotten who was responsible for the original idea (the publication ‘The Blue Rider’, fh), perhaps because I have never been particulary interested in theory… …The Neue Künstlerverein (in Münich, fh) didn’t approve of Kandinsky’s ideas in 1911 and rejected his Composition No. 5. as too big for their show. So Kandinsky withdrew from the association, and Franz Marc, Kubin, Le Fauconnier and I followed this lead. It was then that Kandinsky began to write the book that became ‘The Blue Rider’. (1958)
* source, famous German people life quotes: interview 1958; as quoted in ‘Dialogues – conversations with European Artists at Mid-century’ Edouard Roditi, Lund Humphries Publishers Ltd, London, 1990, pp. 117-118.
– I think we were all more interested in being honest than in being modern. That’s why there could be such great differences between the styles of the various members of our group… …They had great faith in each other. I think that each of them knew that the other, as an artist, was absolutely honest. Whenever Kubin came to Munich from his nearby country retreat, they (Kandinsky and Kubin, fh) spent many hours together., and I wish I had been able to take down in shorthand some of their conversations. Their ideas about art and life were so different. (1958)
* source, famous German people life quotes: interview 1958; as quoted in ‘Dialogues – conversations with European Artists at Mid-century’ Edouard Roditi, Lund Humphries Publishers Ltd, London, 1990, p. 118.
– I was never interested in being just modern – I mean in creating a new style. I simply painted in whatever style seemed to suit me best. But Kandinsky was a thinker and had to express his ideas in words, so he constantly formulated new theories of art which he liked to discuss with Kubin, who was also a thinker…
* source, famous German people life quotes: interview 1958; as quoted in ‘Dialogues – conversations with European Artists at Mid-century’ Edouard Roditi, Lund Humphries Publishers Ltd, London, 1990, p. 118.
– …Kandinsky was an optimist; he had been interested, at first, in fairy tales and legends and chivalrous themes of the past, but he then became increasingly interested, after 1908, in formulating what he called the art of the future rather than indulging in romantic visions of the past. Kubin, on the other hand was a pessimist, always haunted by the past and suspicious of the future. This basic difference in their temperaments made their discussions all t the more fruitful, and their friendship was the more intense. (1958)
* source, famous German people life quotes: interview 1958; as quoted in ‘Dialogues – conversations with European Artists at Mid-century’ Edouard Roditi, Lund Humphries Publishers Ltd, London, 1990, p. 118.
– I don’t think that Kandinsky was ever really a communist. He just happened to be in Russia and to become involved in some revolutionary artistic activities because of his reputation as a revolutionary in the arts. In any case, he left Russia as soon as an opportunity arose. But we had parted, by that time, and I prefer not to express any opinion on Kandinsky’s later ideas and beliefs, with which I was never familiar. (1958)
* source, famous German people life quotes: interview 1958; as quoted in ‘Dialogues – conversations with European Artists at Mid-century’ Edouard Roditi, Lund Humphries Publishers Ltd, London, 1990, pp. 118-119.
– Yes, we (Marianne von Werefkin and Gabriéle Münter, fh) shared very much the same tastes and ideas, when we lived together in this house (the ‘Russian house’ in Murnau, fh). She was extremely perceptive and intelligent, but Alexej von Jawlensky (married with Marianne, fh) didn’t always approve of her work… …Suddenly Jawlensky would pick on some tiny detail of one of Marianne’s best and most original pictures and exclaim: ‘That patch of color, there, is laid on much too flat and smoothly. It’s just like old Riepin (famous Russian painter Ilya Repin, and a teacher once, where both had studied together, fh). Of course it was nonsense and he was only saying it to annoy her. But Jawlensky really was a devotee of the touche de peinture of the French Fauvists, rather than an innovator, a believer in a new kind of art of the future. (1958)
* source, famous German people life quotes: interview 1958; as quoted in ‘Dialogues – conversations with European Artists at Mid-century’ Edouard Roditi, Lund Humphries Publishers Ltd, London, 1990, pp. 118-119 (famous German woman artist Gabriele Munter/ Münter; her woman artist quotes on life & creating expressive landscape paintings in Murnau; Blaue Reiter / Blue Rider)
– They (the master artists Jawlensky and Marianne von Werefkin, fh) often lived here in our Murnau house. But Paul Klee and Franz Marc were also close friends, and August Macke, too, whenever he was in Munich… …Klee was never as active a theorist, in those years, as Kandinsky or Marianne de Werefkin. Besides, it took Klee much longer to become a truly and conscious modern artist… …As you can see in my portrait of Klee, which is painted in 1913 – I mean the one where he is seen seated in one of the rooms here downstairs and wearing white summer slacks – he is not very communicative. That is why I depicted him all hunched up and tense, as if he were constraining some mainspring within himself. In my eyes, it was almost a portrait of silence rather than of Klee, and for many years it no longer occurred to me that he had been my model. But Klee was always a close friend of ours, and Kandinsky and I had great confidence in his talent and his future… (1958)
* source, famous German people life quotes: interview 1958; as quoted in ‘Dialogues – conversations with European Artists at Mid-century’ Edouard Roditi, Lund Humphries Publishers Ltd, London, 1990, p. 120(famous German woman artist Gabriele Munter/ Münter; her woman artist quotes on life & creating expressive landscape paintings in Murnau; Blaue Reiter / Blue Rider)
– Well, when we (Kandinsky and Gabriéle Münter, fh) first met, Munich was still very much a centre of plein-air painting (in the open air,fh), and Kandinsky himself was a plein-air painter too, to some extent. We used to go out sketching and painting together in the countryside, and he painted a picture of me sketching, and I also did one of him (on board in oil, fh). That was a long time ago in 1903. It was only some ten years later, when he painted his first ‘Improvisations’ that he began to work exclusively in his studio. (1958)
* source, famous German people life quotes: interview 1958; as quoted in ‘Dialogues – conversations with European Artists at Mid-century’ Edouard Roditi, Lund Humphries Publishers Ltd, London, 1990, p. 120(famous German woman artist Gabriele Munter/ Münter; her woman artist quotes on life & creating expressive landscape paintings in Murnau; Blaue Reiter / Blue Rider)
– You (interviewer Edouard Roditi, fh) have probably understood that I had always been mainly a plein-air painter, though I also painted portraits and still-life compositions. At first I experienced great difficulty with my brushwork – I mean with that the French call la touche de pinceau. So Kandinsky taught me how to achieve the effects that I wanted with a palette knife. In the view from my window in Sèvres, that I painted in 1906, when we were together in France, you can see how well he taught me. Later of course, here in Murnau, I learned to handle brushes, too, but I managed this by following Kandinsky’s example, first with a palette knife, than with brushes. (1958)
* source, famous German people life quotes: interview 1958; as quoted in ‘Dialogues – conversations with European Artists at Mid-century’ Edouard Roditi, Lund Humphries Publishers Ltd, London, 1990, p. 120(famous German woman artist Gabriele Munter/ Münter; her woman artist quotes on life & creating expressive landscape paintings in Murnau; Blaue Reiter / Blue Rider)
– My main difficulty was that I could not paint fast enough. My pictures are all moments of my life – I mean instantaneous visual experiences, generally noted very rapidly and spontaneously. When I begin to paint, it’s like leaping suddenly into deep waters, and I never know beforehand whether I will be able to swim. Well, it was Kandinsky who taught me the technique of swimming. I mean that he taught me to work fast enough, and with enough self-assurance, to be able to achieve this kind of rapid and spontaneous recording of moments of life. (1958)
* source, famous German people life quotes: interview 1958; as quoted in ‘Dialogues – conversations with European Artists at Mid-century’ Edouard Roditi, Lund Humphries Publishers Ltd, London, 1990, p. 120.
– In 1908, for instance, when I painted my ‘Blue Mountain’, I had learned the trick. It came to me as easily and naturally as song to a bird. After that, I worked more and more on my own. When Kandinsky became increasingly interested in abstract art, I also tried my hand, of course, at a few improvisations of the same general nature as his. But I believe I had developed a figurative style of my own, or at least one that suited my temperament, and I have remained faithful to it ever since, with occasional short holidays in the realm of abstraction. (1958)
* source, famous German people life quotes: interview 1958; as quoted in ‘Dialogues – conversations with European Artists at Mid-century’ Edouard Roditi, Lund Humphries Publishers Ltd, London, 1990, pp. 120 –121.
-… we parted in 1914, when Kandinsky, being an enemy alien (his Russian nationality, fh), had to flee from Germany to Switzerland, as did Jawlensky and Marianne de Werefkin too (to Zürich in Switzerland, fh)… …Ever since we parted in 1914, I have worked mainly by myself. After the First World War, here in Munich, we found that our Blue Rider group had broken up. Marc and Macke had both been killed (in World War 1., fh) Kandinsky, Jawlensky and Marianne were no longer here; Bloch and Burliuk were in America. Those of us who were still in Munich remained friends, of course, but each one of us had learned to work by himself rather than in a group. Besides… …we had always been individualists and out Blue Rider group never had a style of its own as uniform as that of the Paris cubists.
* source, famous German people life quotes: interview 1958; as quoted in ‘Dialogues – conversations with European Artists at Mid-century’ Edouard Roditi, Lund Humphries Publishers Ltd, London, 1990, p. 121. (famous German woman artist Gabriele Munter/ Münter; woman artist quotes on creating expressive landscape paintings in Murnau and the history of Blaue Reiter / Blue Rider)
-… the rejection of impressionistic copies of nature and a move towards sensing the content, abstraction, – expressing the extract (as leading idea for her in the period she worked with Kandinsky, fh)….
* source, famous German people life quotes: ’Alexej von Jawlensky’, Museum Boymans-van-Beuningen Rotterdam; 25/9 – 27/ 11-1994, p. 21.
links for more information of German woman artist Gabriele Munter / Münter; Blue Rider
* about the life and creating expressive landscape art, by the famous German woman artist Gabriele Münter, on Wikipedia
