BERN.- The Zentrum Paul Klee is showing the first comprehensive retrospective in Switzerland devoted to the varied oeuvre of Gabrielle Münter (1877-1962), co-founder of the Blaue Reiter (Blue Rider) and a major artist in German Expressionism. Apart from paintings, prints and drawings, the exhibition will also include part of her photographic work.

Unrecognised Pioneer

As co-founder of the legendary artist group Der Blaue Reiter, Gabriele Münter is one of the most important artists in German Expressionism, and is seen as a pioneer of modern art. In a professional world dominated by men she created an extremely multifaceted body of work over six decades, and developed a powerful pictorial language of her own.

Like many of her female contemporaries, Gabriele Münter remained ignored by art history for a long time. Even in the progressive circle around the Blaue Reiter, to which Münter contributed important impulses and for which she carried out a considerable amount of editorial work, women artists were excluded from theoretical discussions, since they were not deemed to have the same intellectual and creative abilities as their male colleagues. Hence the relevant literature always presents Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc as the main figures of the Blaue Reiter. Münter's contribution to the editing of the Blaue Reiter Almanach is largely sidelined, and the quality of her work predominantly reduced to the years she spent with Kandinsky.

The comprehensive retrospective at the Zentrum Paul Klee seeks to correct this view, and shows Gabriele Münter not only as an important protagonist of the avant-garde, but as a hugely versatile, independent and experimental artist. The thematic construction impressively displays Münter's artistic development, the subjects that interested her throughout her life and the way in which she used them during various stages of her career. The works on display range from early photographs and late impressionist sketches in oil via the brightly-coloured Expressionist paintings to lino cuts and drawings.

Timeless subjects and expressive pictorial language

the one to America at the age of only 21 (1898 1900), her trip to Tunisia with Wassily Kandinsky between 1904 and 1905, as well as her stays in France from 1906. Core themes that would accompany Münter during the whole of her artistic career are already apparent in these pictorial compositions.

They include timeless and evident subjects such as people, architecture and landscape, but also current themes such as technology and machines. On her trip to America Münter documented, among other things, her relatives, their homes and workplaces, as well as ships, steam trains and a roller-coaster. Many of her landscape photographs reveal her interest in playing with distance and perspective, and her desire for a deliberate arrangement of objects within the pictorial space. On her trip to Tunisia she captured the geometrical structures of buildings, windows, archways and ornaments in photographs, drawings and sketches in oils, alongside touristic subjects. Here the pictorial based on simple lines and planes.

The pulse of the times

Munter's style changed from her initially Impressionist-inspired oil sketches, applied with the palette knife, to Expressionistic modes of expression which she further explored above all from 1909 in Murnau and in connection with the Blaue Reiter. From 1935, Münter once again engaged with the surroundings of Murnau in a series of paintings, her eye moving increasingly from nature to modern technology. Her pictorial language lost its Expressionist character and the palette and representation in her work became more naturalistic.

One particular group of works consists of the graphic works produced in 1906/07 in Paris, which reveal a surprisingly modern pictorial language with their clear reduced lines and fresh colours, and today are reminiscent of works of Pop Art. In later portraits, above all in the drawings of the 1920s, depictions accumulate of women writing, reading, daydreaming and smoking - all activities which were at the time attributed exclusively to men. So we can see that Münter moved with the pulse of the time and beyond, not only in terms of style but also of content.

The exhibition at the Zentrum Paul Klee offers the opportunity for viewers to immerse themselves for the first time in such a comprehensive way in the still contemporary work of one of the most important artists of the 20th century. The exhibition is accompanied by a rich supporting programme. Various aspects are examined in depth in three conversations with experts in the exhibition as well as an interactive exhibition in the Children's Museum Creaviva.