The Blue Rider – Exhibition at the Lenbachhaus

The exhibition “Turner. Three Horzions” has just ended at the Lenbachhaus and the museum already has a new exhibition highlight in store. The exhibition “Der Blaue Reiter – Eine neue Sprache” (The Blue Rider – A New Language) shows collection highlights and previously rarely shown works from the museum’s extensive collection by artists of Der Blaue Reiter.

While the Tate in London is showing the exhibition “Expressionists. Kandinsky, Münter and the Blue Rider” as part of the cooperation that also brought the works of William Turner to Munich, the Lenbachhaus is taking the opportunity to take a fresh look at the Blue Rider. It is presenting its collection in a new way and at the same time also showing newly acquired works, for example the work “Drei weibliche sitzende Paar” by Moissey Kogan, who was persecuted and murdered by the National Socialists.

The exhibition “Der Blaue Reiter – Eine Neue Sprache” opened on March 12, 2024 at the Lenbachhaus Munich and was curated by Melanie Vietmeier, Nicolas Maniu and Matthias Mühling.

The organizers of the exhibition “The Blue Rider – A New Language” take a look at the origins of the artists’ group. It was part of the Secession movement around 1900 and can look back on roots in Art Nouveau and Impressionism. The artists of the Blauer Reiter had a wide range of interests, including folk art, children’s art, Japanese woodcuts, Bavarian reverse glass paintings and the international avant-garde. The artists around Gabriele Münter, Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc, Maria Franck-Marc, August Macke, Alexej von Jawlensky, Marianne von Werefkin, Robert Delaunay and Elisabeth Epstein strove for artistic development. This and their diverse interests in various artistic styles were among the foundations of Der Blaue Reiter. An intensive exchange created a group dynamic that proved to be extremely productive.

In 1908 and 1909, they spent time painting in Murnau, founded the Neue Künstlervereinigung München (NKVM), compiled the programmatic almanac “Der Blaue Reiter” and exhibited together. All of this served to form their identity and disseminate their ideas. The aim was to develop a new artistic language, but not to achieve a uniformity of formal means. Rather, they wanted to express collective ideas. Der Blaue Reiter wanted to make subjective experiences visible and sought forms of expression for the spiritual or the intellectual. At the same time, the artists also strove for a transnational dialog. Nevertheless, each artist developed their own formal language: while Kandinsky and Marc devoted themselves to abstraction, Jawlensky, Münter and Werefkin produced expressive depictions of people and nature.

The exhibition organizers of the show “Der Blaue Reiter – Eine neue Sprache” (The Blue Rider – A New Language) are devoting particular attention to the development of the artists’ group’s new language. First, they turn to the prehistory of Der Blaue Reiter. Visitors are introduced to the Art Nouveau artist Katharine Schäffner, who was active in Munich and elsewhere around the turn of the century. She anticipated abstraction with her printed works and was thus influential for the art of the Blaue Reiter. But the through-composed photographs that Gabriele Münter produced during a trip to America also represent an important milestone. However, the curators also document the after-effects of Der Blaue Reiter. Artists such as Adriaan Korteweg and Paul Klee took up ideas from Der Blaue Reiter and developed them further in their works. These works, some of which are less well-known, are also represented, as are highlights of the collection such as “Blue Horse I” by Franz Marc.

The artists of Der Blaue Reiter were also inspired by art from unfamiliar cultures. They believed that this would enable them to develop an unadulterated visual language. In addition to Bavarian and Russian folk art, Arab, Ottoman and Japanese works of art as well as art from indigenous cultures in North America were also used as sources of inspiration. The idea of the exotic in particular served as an escape from one’s own civilization. However, ideas that originated from the context of the time, such as a “lesser development” of the supposedly “wild” peoples, were also adopted. This aspect, which should of course be viewed critically today, is also clearly highlighted in the exhibition and classified according to today’s standards.

The ornamental language of Art Nouveau also resonates with the artists of Der Blaue Reiter. Art Nouveau, which is characterized by scrolling ornamentation often based on vegetal structures, was also influenced by dance movements. The art of the American dancer Loïe Fuller, whose serpentine dance fascinated people around 1900, also inspired works by Munich artists at the turn of the century. One example of this is the artist and dancer Alexander Sacharoff, who explored ornament, dance and movement and thus became a trendsetter.

The beginning of the First World War in 1914 led to the end of avant-garde art movements. The Blue Rider was also affected. Marianne von Werefkin, Wassily Kandinsky and Alexej Jawlensky had to leave the country due to their Russian citizenship and went into exile. Gabriele Münter also chose exile in Sweden and Denmark. August Macke and Franz Marc initially went to the front with great enthusiasm, but this soon turned into shock. Both artists were killed at the front, Macke in 1914 and Marc in 1916. Paul Klee, who belonged to the Blauer Reiter circle, also had to do military service for the German Reich.

During this time, the artists found new visual languages, whether in exile or at the front. The artists Gabriele Münter and Elisabeth Epstein established a direct link between Der Blaue Reiter and New Objectivity. Their respective late works must also be counted among the New Objectivity. Other artists such as Maria Franck-Marc, Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee met again at the Bauhaus in Weimar.