Gefleckte Vase. 1910.
Oil on cardboard.
Signed and dated lower right. With title and inscription "Münter" on the reverse. 51 : 69 cm (20 : 27,1 in). Gabriele Münter received her first art lessons at the 'Damen-Kunstschule' (Ladies Art School) in Düsseldorf and then attended the Society of Woman Artists as M. Dasio's and A. Jank's pupil. Then she went to Munich where she visited the private art school 'Phalanx,' which was run by Wassily Kandinsky. In 1904 Münter and Kandinsky began travelling together: to Holland, Italy, France - where they met Rousseau and Matisse - and elsewhere. Stylistically she now distanced herself from Impressionism and her works began showing Fauve and Expressionist influences. In 1908 she and Kandinsky began leading a calmer life in their apartment in Munich. They often met with Klee, Marc, Macke, Jawlensky and Marianne von Werefkin. The country house Münter bought in Murnau provided an ideal working environment. In 1909 the artist began painting glass, a medium which would later also be adopted by Kandinsky, Marc, Macke and Campendonk. Münter was a member of the 'Neue Künstlervereinigung München' for two years and in 1911 she joined the 'Blaue Reiter', the artist group founded by Kandinsky and Marc. She was interested in Kandinsky's development towards abstract art, but her own works continued to be figurative. Her landscapes, figurative scenes and portraits show a reduction to the essential with an inclination towards humorous characterisation.

Many of the paintings Gabriele Münter did in 1910-11 are distinguished by the completeness of consolidated composition. As in the present flower still life, Münter surrounds smooth colour surfaces with scant black contours, thus working out a concentrated pictorial configuration of enormous formal power and immediacy. She renders forms in abstract terms entirely her own without, however, abandoning representational motifs.

When war broke out, Münter and Kandinsky at first moved to Switzerland. Münter, however, decided a year later (1915) to go to Stockholm, where she separated from Kandinsky. In late autumn 1917 she moved to Copenhagen. She travelled a lot during the 1920s and spent some time in Munich, Murnau, Cologne and Berlin. Due to a creative block, caused by the separation, she did not renew her painting until the 1930s. After 1931 she spent most of her time in Murnau and Munich. In 1956 she received the Culture Prize of the City of Munich. The year 1960 saw the first exhibition of Münter's work in the US, followed in 1961 by a large show in the Mannheim Kunsthalle. The artist died in her house in Murnau on 19 May 1962. [AS]
EXPERTISE: The work will be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné of Gabriele Münter's paintings prepared by the Gabriele Münter und Johannes Eichner-Stiftung
PROVENIENZ: Private collection South Germany.
AUSSTELLUNG: Kunstausstellung der Sturm unter H. Walden, Berlin, 1913, cat.no. 56 (with a label on the reverse).
Gabriele Münter (1904-1913). Kollektiv-Ausstellung, Der Neue Münchener Kunstsalon Max Dietzel, Munich, March-April 1913.
Maleriudstilling Gabriele Münter-Kandinsky, Kobenhavns Ny Kunstsal, Copenhagen, 1919 (with the label on the reverse).
Gabriele Münter, Galerie Wilhelm Grosshennig, Düsseldorf, 15 August - 15 October 1973, with illustration on the cover (with the label on the reverse).
Galerie Ludorff, Düsseldorf, 1991, p. 61 (with illustration).
1908/2008 - Vor 100 Jahren. Kandinsky, Münter, Jawlensky, Werefkin in Murnau. Schloßmuseum Murnau, 11 July - 9 November 2008, cat.no. 27, p. 161 (with illustration in colours on p. 101).

Good overall impression.