THE BLUE RIDER – A TRIBUTE / DER BLAUE REITER – EINE HOMMAGE
A gift for the 30th anniversary!
On 1 July 2023, the 30th anniversary of the Schloßmuseum Murnau, the KK-Stiftung Murnau handed over its Blue Rider art collection with 34 masterpieces to the museum on permanent loan.
With almost 100 special exhibitions to date and numerous research projects – especially on classical modernism and Gabriele Münter – the museum has built up an international reputation over the past three decades. Just in time for its 30th anniversary in 2023, the museum is delighted to announce that the KK Foundation Murnau has given it its Blue Rider art collection on permanent loan.
These works of the highest quality from the circle of artists around Gabriele Münter and Wassily Kandinsky are now being made permanently accessible to a broad public in Murnau, the cradle of the Blue Rider and the adopted home of Gabriele Münter. A generous gesture for which the Murnau Castle Museum is very grateful.
The foundation collection, which is remarkable in its consistent quality, is also confirmation and a mandate for the castle museum to continue to pursue its core competence – the fundamental research into the art of the Blue Rider – at a high level of quality.
THE COLLECTION
The collection, assembled over decades by a collector couple, is an extremely exquisite compilation: expressive works by Wassily Kandinsky and Gabriele Münter from their time in Murnau, plus the painting Violet Turban by Alexej von Jawlensky, painted almost at the same time in 1911, August Macke’s colour kaleidoscopic Colonnade with Sailing Boat I and his iconic painting Before the Hat Shop, both from 1913.
They are all unique masterpieces that play an important role both in the work of the respective artist and in the history of art.
Remarkably, the collection also includes three outstanding preparatory studies, the quality of which almost eclipses the larger versions that were executed after them: Gabriele Münter’s Boat Trip, 1910, Wassily Kandinsky’s Study for Murnau with Church II, 1910, Robert Delaunay’s Esquisses pour Hommage à Blériot, 1914.
