At the Guggenheim, Gabriele Münter Takes her Place
By now, we all know the too-common story of women artists overshadowed by their male partners: Leonora Carrington and Dorothea Tanning by Max Ernst, Jo Hopper by Edward Hopper, Sophie Taeuber-Arp by Jean Arp, Dora Maar and Françoise Gilot by Picasso, Camille Claudel by Rodin—the list goes on. Added to this lineage is Gabriele Münter (1877-1962), long framed in relation to Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944). She has now, finally, been given her due in an exhibition at the Guggenheim, “Gabriele Münter: Contours of a World.”
Münter was one of the founders of the Blue Rider Group (Der Blaue Reiter), active from 1911-1914, alongside Kandinsky, Franz Marc, Marianne von Werefkin and August Macke. The group sought to use color as an expression of inner feeling rather than a descriptive tool for objects. Encouraged by Münter, Kandinsky pushed fully into abstraction, while Münter continued to explore expression through color and contour in landscapes, portraits and still lifes. Kandinsky, ever the theorist, wrote, “Colour is a power which directly influences the soul. Colour is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammers, the soul is the hammer with many strings. The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key to another, to cause vibrations in the soul.” Münter, by contrast, framed her approach with pragmatic clarity, saying, “I extract the most expressive aspects of reality and depict them simply, to the point, with no frills…”
Born in Berlin and raised in Murnau, Germany, Münter was a prolific and restless artist. At 21, she began working as a photographer. During a visit to the U.S. to see relatives, she purchased a No. 2 Bull’s-Eye Kodak camera. An avid cyclist, she valued the freedom of mobility it allowed, photographing throughout Arkansas, Missouri and Texas. She held the camera at eye level rather than at the waist, as Kodak recommended, and when she returned to Germany, she had produced more than 400 exposures. Her photographs of Black communities, children in the street, flat Midwestern landscapes, women strolling in elaborate dress and intimate family gatherings reveal a sophisticated sense of composition, an ability to earn the trust of her subjects and a willingness to leave her own shadow visible within the frame.
In Munich, Münter met Kandinsky while in his life-drawing class and later trained with him as a painter. They became a couple, despite his marriage to his cousin, which did not end until 1911. Two years after meeting, they began traveling extensively and painting side by side. During this period, Münter shifted from brushes to a palette knife. Both had independent means and traveled to Tunisia, Italy and Paris, where they rented an apartment. There, Münter developed her printmaking practice, with six oil studies included in a major exhibition. After returning to Germany, she worked intensively on linocuts and woodcuts, while continuing to live and travel with Kandinsky.
Münter later purchased a house in the countryside of Murnau, which she was forced to close at the outbreak of World War I, an event that also brought an end to the Blue Rider Group. She went into exile in Stockholm, where she exhibited her own work and organized a major exhibition of Kandinsky’s. When he arrived for the opening in 1916, he had married another woman, and that marked the last time the two ever saw each other. Münter continued to work relentlessly and eventually mounted the largest solo exhibition of her career, presenting 120 works across multiple mediums, including reverse glass paintings. She returned to Munich and Murnau, painting portraits and exhibiting in Copenhagen, Berlin and Cologne. At 50, she entered a relationship with the philosopher and art historian Johannes Eichner, who became her partner and agent. When World War II broke out, Münter hid her extensive collection in the basement of her Murnau house, including works by the Blue Rider artists. In 1949, Eichner organized a retrospective of her work that toured 22 German cities over two years. They were together until his death in 1958; Münter died two years later at 85.
Because of a major donation of her work and that of other Blue Rider artists, principally Kandinsky, Münter was long known primarily as a member of the group rather than as an independent figure. Yet her work testifies to a lifelong devotion to art across many mediums. Most of her life unfolded without Kandinsky, centered on her own practice, yet she, like many women artists, was relegated to the shadows of a male counterpart. With the Guggenheim exhibition, she emerges unmistakably as an artist in her own right.
Münter never stopped experimenting. She photographed, drew constantly, made prints and reverse glass paintings, embroidered, sculpted and painted in oil. At the Guggenheim, her work bursts with color, revealing ever-deeper layers of observation. She endured two World Wars, Kandinsky’s betrayals and entrenched prejudice against creative women. With this exhibition, she is not so much rediscovered as finally recognized for what she always was.
“Gabriele Münter: Contours of a World” is at the Guggenheim in New York through Apr 26, 2026.