Munich, Murnau and the Blue Rider group

The Blue Rider group of artists was formed when painters Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc broke away from the New Artists’ Association in Munich. Their abstract approaches caused discontent among the predominantly representational members: tradition clashed with innovation, an older generation of painters and professors with the Sturm und Drang mentality of youth.

The irreconcilable differences led Marc and Kandinsky to take an independent path with their own exhibitions. In 1911, they gave the new movement (inspired by an animal painting by Marc) its legendary name: ‘Der Blaue Reiter’ (The Blue Rider). Soon, they were joined by other artists such as Marianne von Werefkin, Alexej von Jawlensky, Alfred Kubin and Paul Klee.

They were united by their interest in abstraction and their desire to question existing painting traditions: in Kandinsky’s work, the initially representational forms transformed into geometric-abstract structures. Franz Marc, who was fascinated by animals throughout his life, broke down their bodies into sometimes prismatic, sometimes organically sweeping areas of colour, thus achieving a lyrical form of abstraction.