Gabriele Münter

Gabriele Münter was an expressionist painter who was at the forefront of the Munich avant-garde in the early 20th century. She studied and lived with the painter Wassily Kandinsky and was a founding member of the expressionist group Der Blaue Reiter.

Gabriele Münter was important because she helped shape the birth of modern expressionist painting—not just as a participant, but as a key innovator.

She was a founding member of Der Blaue Reiter, one of the most influential avant-garde groups in early 20th-century Europe, alongside Kandinsky, Franz Marc, and Paul Klee. Münter played a crucial role in developing a bold, simplified visual language: strong outlines, intense colors, and flattened forms that broke decisively with academic realism.

Equally important, Münter was a pioneer in reclaiming folk art and the “primitive” as sources of modern artistic expression, anticipating ideas that would define modernism. Beyond her paintings, her Munich house preserved hundreds of works by Der Blaue Reiter artists, safeguarding a core chapter of modern art history during the Nazi period.