The Guggenheim Museum's comprehensive survey of German Expressionist painter Gabriele Münter (1877-1962) opens with a welcoming gesture that perfectly captures the spirit of this remarkable artist. The exhibition begins with "From the Griesbräu Window" (1908), which depicts the Bavarian Alpine town of Murnau am Staffelsee as viewed from a brewery-inn window on the market square. This painting immediately establishes the tone of hospitality and invitation that characterizes Münter's work throughout her career.
Murnau was undergoing a beautification project at the time, adding colorful facades to attract tourists, and Münter's use of color as invitation resonates throughout her entire body of work. Pink brushstrokes create visual connections between the foreground rooftops and distant mountains, drawing viewers into a landscape that the artist herself associated with feelings of liberation and the unlocking of her creative potential. This location held special significance for Münter, representing a place where her artistic vision truly flourished.
Münter was in Murnau with her then-partner and former teacher, Wassily Kandinsky, who also painted views of the same town. Together, they developed a boldly expressive artistic style that was later formalized in 1911 with the formation of Der Blaue Reiter, a loose association of painters working in and around Munich. While much of Expressionism tends to feel outwardly explosive and dramatic, Münter offered particularly intimate and personal perspectives that set her apart from her contemporaries.
This is not to suggest that Münter couldn't engage with dramatic themes when she chose to do so. Her exuberant "Dragon Fight" (1913), based on the myth of Saint George slaying the dragon, demonstrates her ability to create dynamic, action-filled compositions. Often interpreted as an allegory of the new guard artists in Der Blaue Reiter fighting against the old artistic order, the painting is fundamentally a study in dynamic color relationships, featuring the green of the landscape in violent contrast with the spreading pool of red blood from the multi-headed dragon's severed necks.
However, it's in her quieter, more intimate works that Münter truly excels and distinguishes herself. In one almost unbearably intimate glimpse of her domestic life, "Living Room in Murnau (Interior)" from around 1910, she recreates an evening at home with remarkable tenderness. A pair of slippers positioned at the edge of the canvas offers a gentle welcome to viewers, personal mementos line the shelves and walls, and in an adjacent room, Kandinsky reclines in bed, providing a rare glimpse of a canonical artist in a moment of repose.
Münter's willingness to expose her personal life and herself to viewers lends her version of Expressionism something more generous and accessible than her partner's grandiose claims to universal spirituality. This sense of exposure and intimacy was formulated early in her career, even before she began painting seriously. She started as a photographer, working with a No. 2 Bulls-Eye Kodak camera during a trip to the United States in 1900.
Her practice with photography allowed Münter to experiment with cropping and composition in ways that would later significantly influence her painting technique. A tight view of parcels clutched on a woman's lap in "Still Life on the Tram (After Shopping)" (ca. 1909-12) feels especially photographic in its composition and perspective. Working with the camera also made Münter acutely aware of ways she might intentionally incorporate herself into her work, as her body steadied the camera and her shadow sometimes appeared on the film.
The personal tragedy that struck in 1920, when Münter learned that Kandinsky, who had returned to Moscow to wait out World War I, had married another woman, did not diminish her artistic output or her generous spirit. Her work continued for several more decades with the same warmth and invitation that had characterized her earlier pieces. "Breakfast of the Birds" (1934) presents a visual and gustatory tableau where Münter has arranged tea and cake on a table, as well as birds in the bush outside the window, creating a scene designed as much for viewers' pleasure as for that of the seated figure depicted in the painting.
"The Letter" (1930) similarly offers a small plate of grapes at the edge of the canvas, creating what could be seen as a perfect antithesis to the threateningly arranged bunch of grapes in the center foreground of Picasso's "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" (1907). Münter's approach represents a version of modern art without the outright aggression that so often accompanies it, though she was no less seriously engaged with fundamental questions of representation, including radical innovations in form, composition, and color.
The exhibition's setting in the Guggenheim's more secluded rooms, rather than spiraling up the museum's famous central ramp as Kandinsky's works have done several times, actually fits Münter's practice perfectly. The intimate spaces create a personal encounter between viewer and painting that mirrors the artist's own approach to her subjects. The snowy landscape painting "Snowy Landscape with a Red-Roofed House" (1935) proves especially appealing to visitors, with the start of a path placed right at its center and two figures in the midground actively shoveling, making space for viewers to enter Münter's richly conceived artistic world.
