Current Exhibition

Gabriele Münter’s Worlds

New Presentation in the Münter House

The interest in Münter’s work is growing continuously. The painter is represented in numerous exhibition projects around the world. The Gabriele Münter- und Johannes Eichner-Stiftung, which manages the artist’s estate and thus also her house in Murnau, has been pursuing a lively exhibition policy for years, with the aim of propagating Münter’s art in accordance with the Foundation’s objective.

The exhibition Gabriele Münter. Pioneer of  Modern Art which the Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern showed from January 29 to May 8, 2022 in cooperation with the Münter-Eichner Foundation presented almost exclusively works from the Foundation’s collection. Such projects provide an opportunity to show the public unknown paintings by Münter or paintings that have not been exhibited for decades. This is also the case with the new presentation in the Münter House that, parallel to the current exhibition ‘Gabriele Münter and Her Guests’, introduces eight lesser known paintings to visitors, as well as several of the artist’s personal effects. The timespan ranges from 1910 to 1959. The selection predominantly comprises landscapes and still lifes: a winter landscape from the 1920s is, stylistically, a reminder of the time Münter spent in Scandanavia from 1915 until 1920; a still life with a black mask recalls the world of the theatre. Münter was in fact an avid theatregoer. City life is evoked in a study for a scene in a department store. These diverse worlds are united through the compositional means employed by the painter. The cropping of pictures as well as the unconventional use of perspective are reminiscent of photographic techniques and show how the artist never committed herself exclusively to one single creative pattern. The thirty-two paintings and photographs on view throughout the Münter House reflect the wide range of Münter’s creativity.

Gabriele Münter and Her Guests

Creative encounters at the Münter House

Opening: September 11, 2019

One hundred and ten years ago, on August 21, 1909, Gabriele Münter bought a home in Murnau in which art history would be written. Now widely known as the Münter House, the comprehensively renovated building was opened to the public as a museum in 1999.

To celebrate the double anniversary, we have designed a special exhibition that turns the spotlight on the Münter House as a hub of creative inspiration. The show focuses on the Blue Rider years as well as events in 1934 that exemplify the house’s history in the 1930s. The presentation on the ground floor, which has been completely redesigned for the first time since 1999, includes a selection of photographs. Thirteen new paintings by Münter, eight of which have never been on public display, are on view in the other rooms.

In another first, the Münter House now also hosts contemporary art, in the form of a new work by the Munich-based artist Caro Jost: decades after Gabriele Münter’s death, the Münter House remains a place of inspiring encounters between creative minds.

Past Exhibitions

„In Search of Creativity’s Roots“

„Primitivism“ in the Work of Gabriele Münter

From September 27, 2016, to September 1, 2019

Like many of her contemporaries, Gabriele Münter sought to get closer to the “sources” of human creativity by engaging with the world of children, folk art, and extra-European cultural objects. They represent some of the key elements guiding her art after 1908. The inspiration she drew from these cultural phenomena and artifacts underpins the small selection of works at the Münter House, some of which have never been shown publicly.

The small show originally complemented the comprehensive exhibition “Gabriele Münter: Painting to the Point” at Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus in Munich (October 31, 2017 – April 8, 2018), at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebæk/Denmark (May 3 – August 19, 2018) and at Museum Ludwig in Cologne (September 15, 2018 – January 13, 2019).

The “Gabriele Münter: Painting to the Point” exhibition catalogue, by Isabelle Jansen, is available from the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus online shop.

New Paintings by Gabriele Münter in the Münter House in Murnau

From December 2013 to September 2016

For the first time since the reopening of the Münter House following a major renovation completed in 1999, a new selection of paintings by Gabriele Münter is on display there. All works form part of the estate of the artist, most of them have never been exhibited. Thematically, the works, which date from 1909 to 1943, refer to Murnau, to the Münter House and to the local folk art which provided a vital source of inspiration for Münter. This presentation reveals new and little-known aspects of Gabriele Münter’s art.

“Die blaue Reiterei stürmt voran”

Picture Sources for The Blue Rider Almanac – The Vasily Kandinsky and Gabriele Münter Collection

From May 10, 2012, to December 1, 2013

Edited by Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc, The Blue Rider Almanac appeared in May 1912. An exhibition is celebrating the hundredth anniversary of this event at the Münter House in Murnau where the working meetings for this seminal programmatic document of twentieth-century art took place.

The exhibition focuses on the principle of comparing pictorial materials from different periods and cultural milieus that was central to the Almanac. Apart from illustrative material collected by the editors Kandinsky and Marc, works from Gabriele Münter’s and Wassily Kandinsky’s private collection – South German votive tablets, Russian picture sheets, children’s drawings, and non-European art – are on view for the first time.

As with the earlier exhibition Gabriele Münter und Wassily Kandinsky: Perlenstickereien und Textilarbeiten aus dem Nachlass von Gabriele Münter, the project aims at being a scholarly study of a hitherto unknown part of Münter’s estate and at presenting it to the public in the context of an exhibition at the Münter House. The accompanying publication is therefore both a scholarly inventory and an exhibition catalogue.

Catalogue (€ 18)

16.5 x 21.5 cm, 112 pages

Published by the Gabriele Münter- und Johannes Eichner-Stiftung, Munich

Gabriele Münter and Wassily Kandinsky. Bead and Textile Works

From October 19, 2010, to April 15, 2013

In the early years of the twentieth century Gabriele Münter and Wassily Kandinsky not only painted pictures but devoted themselves to other forms of expression such as textile works. They collaborated closely to produce small bead-embroidered bags and wall hangings designed by Kandinsky and executed by Münter. Sometimes these draw on the forms of art nouveau, or they stem from Kandinsky’s personal pictorial world. Among these textile works in the Münter estate in the Gabriele Münter- und Johannes Eichner-Stiftung is a hitherto unknown painting on textile by Kandinsky. This work by Kandinsky was on view for the first time in an exhibition of embroidery and other textiles owned by Gabriele Münter at the Münter House in Murnau, and has been presented to the public in a publication. For the first time a special exhibition presented the two artists collaborating at their joint workplace, following a show of documents in 2009 dealing with the purchase of the house.

Catalogue (€ 15)

Published by the Gabriele Münter- und Johannes Eichner-Stiftung, Munich