The Blue Rider

Wassily Kandinsky read law and economics before moving to Munich in 1896, when he was thirty years old, to study painting. He began with a four-year course of training at Anton Ažbe's private painting school. In 1900, he became Franz von Stuck's student at the Academy for one year; in 1901, he joined other progressively minded members of the Schwabing scene to found the artists' association Phalanx, which held exhibitions and operated an art school. In early 1902, Gabriele Münter enrolled in his class. The two became a couple one year later; in 1904, out of consideration for Anya Shemiakina, to whom Kandinsky was still married, the two adopted an itinerant lifestyle that took them to Holland, Tunis, Dresden, and Rapallo, among other places; in 1906 – 07, they spent a year in Paris. During those years, Münter and Kandinsky primarily created small-format nature studies in a post-Impressionist style, using the palette knife and working en plein air. Kandinsky also produced an entirely separate oeuvre of works featuring nostalgic Old Russian motifs, mosaic-like colorful pictures into which he integrated aspects of Symbolism and "Jugendstil", among other influences. In 1908, Kandinsky and Münter returned to Munich and resolved to stay.

Alexej Jawlensky had met the painter Marianne von Werefkin at the St. Petersburg Academy of Art, and she became his companion of many years. In 1896, the couple moved to Munich, where they were introduced to Kandinsky. They rented two spacious adjoining apartments on Schwabing's Giselastraße which quickly became known as the "Salon of the Giselists," where many progressively minded artists and visiting Russian colleagues gathered. Between 1903 and 1907, they went on several extended trips to France, where they were profoundly impressed by the paintings of Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, and Henri Matisse. 

In the summer of 1908, Wassily Kandinsky and Gabriele Münter as well as Alexej Jawlensky and Marianne von Werefkin left Munich for the countryside at Murnau, where the two artists' couples developed a novel expressive style of painting. The event marks the beginning of the history of the Blue Rider.

Murnau's picturesque situation on a hill above a moor beyond which the Alps abruptly rise as a towering range, the intense light, and the colorfully painted houses of the village enthralled the artists. Inspired also by the most recent French painting — the works of Henri Matisse and the Fauves — the four friends experienced a sudden boost of creative energy. They captured views of the village and the surrounding countryside, painting spontaneously and as though intoxicated by the explosion of color before their eyes. The resulting pictures are distinguished by patches of unmixed luminous color set down flatly and side by side, compositions organized by two-dimensional structures, and a simplification of forms that verges on abstraction from the natural object being depicted. The artists returned to Murnau to work in 1909. They now also discovered the local popular reverse glass painting and religious folk art. Especially the works on glass with their glowing colors, simple black contours, and the "primitive" quality of the depiction proved an important source of inspiration. Kandinsky and Münter began collecting such objects and furnishing their home in Murnau with them. During the next several years, the so-called Russians' House would become an epicenter of innovation in art.

After the fruitful summer Kandinsky, Münter, Jawlensky, and Werefkin spent painting in Murnau in 1908, the discussions about art among the circle of progressively minded artist friends who met regularly in Jawlensky and Werefkin's salon in Schwabing grew more heated. In January 1909, they decided to found an association they called the "Neue Künstlervereinigung München" (short NKVM, New Artists' Association Munich). Besides Kandinsky, Jawlensky, Münter, and Werefkin, its founding members included Adolf Erbslöh, Alexander Kanoldt, and Alfred Kubin as well as Paul Baum, Wladimir Bechtejeff, Erma Bossi, Mossej Kogan, and the dancer Alexander Sacharoff. Until 1911, the NKVM held annual exhibitions at Galerie Thannhauser, Munich, although the reviews in the press were scathing. On occasion of the group's second show, in 1910, Franz Marc publicly took their side, which led to his personal acquaintance with them, and he became a member of the club as well. Kandinsky and Marc soon formed closer ties and increasingly found themselves at odds with the group's moderate members. In 1911, they made plans to publish an art almanac that would bear the title "Der Blaue Reiter", or The Blue Rider.

The tensions within the NKVM proved irreconcilable in December 1911, when the jury of the group's third exhibition rejected an almost completely abstract painting by Kandinsky. He, Marc, and Münter resigned from the NKVM and quickly organized their own show, remembered today as the legendary first exhibition of the Blauer Reiter. The new association now united the artistic energies of this important innovative movement within German Expressionism; the remaining NKVM, meanwhile, dissolved within a year.

After resigning from the "Neue Künstlervereinigung München", Kandinsky, Marc, and Münter presented the first exhibition of the Blue Rider at Galerie Thannhauser, Munich, in December 1911. The show featured around fifty works by the organizers and likeminded artist friends: by Albert Bloch, David and Wladimir Burljuk, Heinrich Campendonk, Robert Delaunay, Elisabeth Epstein, Eugen von Kahler, Wassily Kandinsky, August Macke, Franz Marc, Gabriele Münter, Jean Bloé Niestlé, Henri Rousseau, and Arnold Schönberg. The extensive second Blue Rider exhibition was on display at Hans Goltz's gallery from February to April 1912; it consisted solely of works on paper and included contributions by Paul Klee and Alfred Kubin as well.

After lengthy planning, the almanac Der Blaue Reiter came out in May 1912. In numerous plates, the book presented works of art from different eras and genres — Old Masters, avant-garde works, and "primitive," including non-European, art —side by side. With this selection, it vividly illustrated an anti-academic, open-minded, international, and tolerant vision. Painters, composers, and critics from different nations wrote contributions in which they articulated the goals of this new art. Kandinsky's and Marc's statements, in particular, express their shared belief in the "spiritual in art," and it is this distinctly philosophical element that sets the Blue Rider apart from other movements within Expressionism. These were the primary activities of the group, which may be more properly described as a loose circle of artists with a pluralistic profile. Jawlensky and Werefkin, who had not initially joined the breakaway faction leaving the NKVM, contributed works to the subsequent touring exhibitions of the Blue Rider starting in 1912; the Berlin-based gallery operator Herwarth Walden took a leading role in organizing these shows, which introduced audiences throughout Central Europe and Scandinavia to the Blue Rider.