Beyond the World. The Blue Rider

In the early years of the twentieth century, a circle of artists, women as well as men, came together in Munich. They shared a vision and the resolve to renew art and change society. 

Key events in the history of their movement were the two exhibitions organized by the editorial board Der Blaue Reiter in Munich in 1911–12. The title was an explicit reference to the endeavor laid out in the almanac: the programmatic yearbook established the Blue Rider as a node in a network of creative minds that spanned the globe and transcended divisions of era and genre. Yet the Blue Rider was more than that: it was sustained by a web of exchanges of ideas in which cultural differences were harnessed as a creative resource. Participating in a transnational dialogue that extended from the German Empire and France to Russia and all the way to the U.S., the contributors created novel visual languages for a world in transformation. Many of them boldly lived unconventional lives, challenging gender roles and devising new forms of representation beyond bourgeois standards. 

The exhibition turns the spotlight on their pioneering achievements—from Franz Marc’s symbolic theory of color and Wassily Kandinsky’s abstractions to Alexander Sacharoff’s performative transgressions. A special focus is on the women artists; unusually visible for their time, they played leading roles in the movement. Gabriele Münter’s expressive paintings appear side by side with Elisabeth Epstein’s haunting self-portraits; the cosmopolite Marianne von Werefkin’s dramatic paintings, with Maria Frank-Marc’s enigmatic still lifes and utopian children’s worlds. 

The presentation brings the debut of major new accessions to the Lenbachhaus’s collection such as Wilhelm Morgner’s abstract compositions in large formats and works by Emmy Klinker and Albert Bloch that frame critical observations of social realities. With over 150 works, the exhibition opens up fresh perspectives on one of the most important movements of the European avant-garde and demonstrates how the questions it raised about the pursuit of personal freedom, aesthetic practice, and innovation across boundaries of genre have lost none of their relevance. The Blue Rider artists thought of art as a message and not just a problem of (beautiful) form. Their quest was for a wider horizon that Else Lasker-Schüler, in a poem from 1911, limned with the words: "Beyond the world." 

The exhibition is held as part of the preparations for our anniversary "100 Years of Lenbachhaus 1929 / 2029." 

A cooperation between the Lenbachhaus and the Gabriele Münter and Johannes Eichner Foundation. With generous support from Förderverein Lenbachhaus e.V.

With works by: Albert Bloch, Erma Bossi, Wladimir Burljuk, Heinrich Campendonk, Robert Delaunay, Elisabeth Epstein, Maria Franck-Marc, Alexej von Jawlensky, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Emmy Klinker, Moissey Kogan, Else Lasker-Schüler, August Macke, Franz Marc, Wilhelm Morgner, Gabriele Münter, Jean Bloé Niestlé, Marianne von Werefkin

Curated by Melanie Vietmeier and Matthias Mühling 

Assistant Curator: Johannes Michael Stanislaus