women and the blue rider

Some thoughts on

Malerinnen und Musen des »Blauen Reiters«
by Hildegard Möller
Piper Verlag 2007

I am definitely going to see the current exhibition on German expressionists of the "Blue Rider" group at the Tate Modern (Expressionists: Kandinsky, Münter and the Blue Rider, until October 20), but as I haven't quite made it yet, I read this book in preparation, which is a joint biography of five women associated with the group, namely the painters Gabriele Münter, Marianne von Werefkin, and Maria Marc, and the muses and wives Lisbeth Macke and Lily Klee. We have had the book since it came out in 2007 but I hadn't read it yet. Partially, I presume, due to the misguided feeling that there wasn't much left to discover in it, as the four core members of the group (Marc, Kandinsky, Macke, Klee) represent the art I grew up with. (Funnily enough, these are also the ones that are represented in the compact art books series from Taschen.) Jawlensky is the one rider I am less familiar with - strangely the one work I associate his name with appeared on a postage stamp in the 1970s. Of the women I was aware of Gabriele Münter as a painter but not so much of the other two.

So, well, although I was familiar with the art of the Blue Rider, I did learn a lot about the lives behind it, and it was an interesting experience to follow these lives from the perspectives of the women involved. Ironically, although I perceive many of the very colourful paintings of the group as joyful, the lives weren't all that much fun, seeing that Marc and Macke died young in WW1, while Münter and Werefkin had rather troubled relations with their more famous painter boys, and Klee only lived to age 60 and a half. So in significant parts this is the story of three widows and two women abandoned by the artist partners they supported to the point of self-sacrifice. Although the roots of the Blue Rider are in the Schwabing district of Munich, there is a lot about moving out of the city to remote farm houses, eg at Murnau, which I find a bit scary. The painters in the story shared the dubious honour of being branded "entartete Kunst" (degenerate art) by the Nazis, which obviously has become a badge of honour since but didn't help the careers of those who were still alive when it happened.

Considering all the very exciting (to me at least) and brightly coloured art that is being created in this story, I find the author's writing style a bit subdued and grey. I realise she's obviously striving to stay neutral, not to make any feminist statements in support of the women wronged one way or another, but still I find this neutrality clashes with the revolutionary nature of the art in question and of some of the lives being lived as well.

It was interesting too to meet some of the marginal figures of the Blauer Reiter, including August Macke's less famous cousin Helmuth Macke, who hailed from Krefeld, so I will have a look at his art the next time I'm there, and will also have a look at his family history in case his maternal ancestry throws up anything connected to my Krefeld clan.

It was also interesting to learn that the one and only almanac "Der Blaue Reiter", which gave the group its name and identity, was published in 1912 by a young man called Reinhard Piper - whose publishing house survives to this day and has indeed published this very book as well. A paperback edition came out on the centenary of the almanac's publication. I'm surprised it hasn't been translated ahead of the Tate Modern exhibition - could have sold well there.

PS I'll take the opportunity to list here the relevant exhibitions I (may) have seen (the childhood ones still need research:
22.8.-12.9.1969 Museum Folkwang, Essen
Paul Klee, Aquarelle und Zeichnungen. No memory of this whatsoever but I found the catalogue of the exhibition among my possessions so assume I will have seen it as a 5-year-old.
1970s: Pretty sure I saw a generic Blauer Reiter exhibition at the Museum Folkwang as a child. Definitely sure I saw one about Karl Schmidt Rottluff a bit later (maybe ca. 1980). May have seen exhibitions featuring Campendonk and/or the trip to Tunisia undertaken by Macke and Klee.
1980s: Visited Lenbachhaus in Munich with the Jaenicke research lab in 1989/90?
1.8.-19.9.2004 Von-der-Heydt-Museum Wuppertal,
Wassily Kandinsky: Der Klang der Farbe 1920-1921
2.11.2013 Tate Modern
Paul Klee
2014 (ab 25.9.) Bundeskunsthalle Bonn
August Macke und Franz Marc: Eine Künstlerfreundschaft
25.2.2024 Kunstmuseum Pablo Picasso Münster
Brücke zur geistigen Welt: Meisterwerke des Expressionismus
17.5.2024 K20 Düsseldorf
Hilma af Klint und Wassily Kandinsky: Träume von der Zukunft