Kandinsky, Marc, and Der Blaue Reiter

A reappraisal of the Blue Rider group in the context of their legendary almanac

For just a few years at the beginning of the 20th century, Munich was the hot spot of Germany‘s artistic avant-garde. Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc’s initiative as founding editors of the almanac Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) was a catalyst for the arts. The journal and the 1911 exhibition of the same name created international waves and heralded the start of the modern era in Germany before the First World War. Today, the names of the movement’s key players Franz Marc, Gabriele Münter, Alexej von Jawlensky and Paul Klee stand for a pivotal chapter in the international history of art, marked by the transition of painting into a vibrant, colorful and transcendental form of abstraction. This volume surveys their accomplishments.

The Blaue Reiter was an art movement that lasted from 1911 to 1914 and was fundamental to Expressionism. Founded by Russian emigrants in Munich including Wassily Kandinsky, Alexej von Jawlensky, Marianne von Werefkin, along with native German artists Franz Marc, August Macke and Gabriele Münter, the group's unified goal was to express spiritual truths through art--largely through a spontaneous, intuitive approach to painting, which, for many group members, took the form of abstraction. The group organized touring exhibitions before disbanding around the outbreak of the First World War in 1914.