The oeuvre of Gabriele Münter, who is currently recognized in several European exhibitions, including shows at the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid, the Tate in London, and the Leopold Museum in Vienna, has often been narrowed down to her landscapes, still lifes and village scenes from her time in Murnau. The artist fell in love with the quaint place in the foothills of the Alps in 1908, but it was only in 1930 that she settled for good in the small Bavarian town. In the meantime, she had done an astonishing amount of traveling: As early as 1899, she visited the USA with her sister; after the turn of the century, Münter and Wassily Kandinsky went to see Amsterdam, Marseille, Tunis, Brussels, Milan, and Bolzano; they stayed in Sèvres near Paris for almost a year and later also spent some time in Switzerland. Between 1915 and 1920, she lived in Scandinavia, initially in Stockholm, and later visited other regions of Sweden. Her then-largest solo exhibition took place in Copenhagen in 1918. In October 1929, the now-established artist once again visited the art metropolis of Paris before heading down south in September 1930. In Paris, she stayed at the Hôtel d'Odessa in the Montparnasse district. The city seemed to invigorate and inspire the painter. Just as she had in 1906, she took drawing lessons at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière and also joined the “Fédération des Artistes,” where she met numerous artists. Upon visits to theaters, cinemas, museums, galleries, and cafés, she observed the hustle and bustle of the city and its people. As a result, she created a small number of cityscapes, including “Paris, Villa Les Fleurettes” and “Baum an der Seine" (Tree on the Seine) (both in 1930, Gabriele Münter and Johannes Eichner Foundation, Munich).

In the present nocturnal cityscape (presumably Rue Lamblardie in the 12th arrondissement), Münter combines several key subjects of her work. The atmospheric evening sky in bold blue and pink is reminiscent of her landscapes inspired by the “Blue Land” in her Bavarian adopted home, and the illuminated house facades call Münter's famous depictions of the houses and streets in Murnau to mind, even if the multi-story buildings and the towers hinted at in the background (possibly the Eiffel Tower) suggest a big city. A small detail, a steaming asphalt machine, refers to motifs of “work and technology” that played an important role in earlier works made as of 1911, which she repeatedly revisited up into the 1930s. In these pictures, to which the Lenbachhaus in Munich dedicated an entire subchapter in the highly acclaimed exhibition in 2018, she shows construction sites and road workers, horse-drawn carts, cement mixers, and excavators. In Paris, she created, among other things, the painting “Baugerüst” (Scaffolding, 1930, Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich) as well as the work offered here, in which she skillfully combines her keen interest in machines and technology, as seen in the rising steam of the asphalt machine, with the atmospheric Parisian scenery in the evening. Hence, “Blick aus dem Fenster (Rue Lamblardie)” marked the beginning of a significant series that testified to Münter's innovative creativity and key role within European Modernism. [CH]