Impressionist and Modern Art

The present lot will be included in the catalogue raisonné of Gabriele Münter 's paintings published by the Gabriele Münter and Johannes Eichner Foundation, under No. 19b.

Provenance:

Dalzell Hatfield Galleries, Los Angeles, California.

Exhibited:

Pasadena, California, The Pasadena Art Museum, German Expressionism, April 23 - June 4, 1961.

Lot Essay:

Gabriele Münter was once described by Johannes Eichner, her companion from the late 1920s onwards, as an artistic tabula rasa, "not burdened by the prejudices of tradition or by the passing taste of times" (Kandinsky und Gabriele Münter: Von Ursprüngen moderner Kunst, Munich, 1957). This statement not only emphasizes Münter as committed to a self-developed stylistic vocabulary, but also as an artist keen to distill inner truth and personal reality from the mundane and the ordinary. Alongside fellow artists Marianne von Werefkin, Alexej von Jawlensky, and Wassily Kandinsky, Münter was a founding member of The New Artists' Association in Munich in 1909. It was here that the artist adopted her individualistic approach to subject matter, concentrating on still-life and portraiture in a scale that depicted the every day, rather than the grand metaphysical interpretations expressed by the other members of the group.

Still Life with Gray Teakettle (Stilleben mit grauer Teekanne), 1935, is a noteworthy example of how the still life was integral to Münter's oeuvre. Traditionally, the still life was viewed as a feminine genre, a view that the artist challenged, inspired perhaps by the great role still life played in contemporary French avant-garde painting. She absorbed the influences of Henri Matisse, Vincent van Gogh, and Paul Gauguin to create similar effects, but in her own style. Additionally, in Murnau, where she had a house from 1931 onwards, the artist found a source of inspiration for her still lifes in the local naïve art of reverse glass paintings particular to the area. The simple forms and bold outlines characterized by the reverse glass painting, combined with the influence of both the Expressionists and the Impressionists, translated into Münter’s unique use of flattened forms and the encapsulation of color with heavy black line.

In the present work, the thick black lines bring the tea kettle, flower arrangements, and table into unusual visual focus, with each item gaining a form of independent existence. Drawing from Der Blaue Reiter belief in the symbolic nature of color, the everyday objects, with their vibrant, pulsating palette of blues, yellows, grays, and greens in a thickly worked impasto, stand apart from each other not through perspective but by subtle variations in the musicality – the “essence” – of their tone. It is a demonstration of Münter's unique ability to produce visionary poetry gleaned from the most ordinary of possessions.