Oil on panel
With estate stamp "Gabriele Münter Nachlass" on verso as well as inscribed (by artist?) "7/33 16. I. 33 n. Zch [nach Zeichnung]". 32,9 x 41 cm (12,9 x 16,1 in)
With two small labels, numbered "L 285" and "1050" respectively.

PROVENANCE: Gabriele Münter- and Johannes Eichner-Foundation, Munich.
Galerie Wilhelm Grosshennig, Düsseldorf 1973.
Private collection.

EXHIBITION: Deutsche und französische Kunstwerke des 20. Jahrhunderts, Galerie Wilhelm Grosshennig, Düsseldorf, 6 November, 1972 - 15 February, 1973, p. 64 (with illu. in colors).
Special exhibition Gabriele Münter, Galerie Wilhelm Grosshennig, Düsseldorf, 15 August - 15 October 1973 (with illu. in colors).

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 characterization. When war broke out, Münter and Kandinsky at first moved to Switzerland. Münter, however, decided a year later to go to Stockholm, where she separated from Kandinsky. In late autumn 1917 she moved to Copenhagen. She traveled a lot during the 1920s and spent some time in Munich, Murnau, Cologne and Berlin. After 1931 she spent most of her time in Murnau and Munich.

In the reclusiveness of Murnau, far away from the Munich and Berlin art scenes, Gabriele Münter developed a painting style that, based on her own experience and taken to calmer paths, never denied her artistic roots. Gabriele Münter’s later partner Dr. Johannes Eichner described this process as follows: "The art of Gabriele Münter does not reflect anything of the jaggedness of the outward existence. Neither the maladies nor the disasters of our century tempted her or incited her views. [..] Deeply rooted in nature, in comparison with which personal fates, contemporary events and mankind’s lapses are mere ripples on the surface, Gabriele Münter‘s painting has an air of the eternal. Fundamental changes, stages of development and revolutions cannot be found in her oeuvre since 1908 " (Gabriele Münter, Werke aus 5 Jahrzehnten, ex. cat. Braunschweiger Kunstverein 1950, no page).

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 at Murnau on 19 May 1962. [KD].