Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) was a group of artists and a designation by Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc for their exhibition and publication activities, in which both artists acted as sole editors in the almanac of the same name (first published in mid-May 1912). The editorial team organized two exhibitions in Munich in 1911 and 1912 to demonstrate their art-theoretical ideas based on the works of art exhibited. Traveling exhibitions in German and other European cities followed. The Blue Rider disbanded at the start of World War I in 1914.
The artists associated with Der Blaue Reiter were important pioneers of modern art of the 20th century; they formed a loose network of relationships, but not an art group in the narrower sense like Die Brücke (The Bridge) in Dresden. The work of the affiliated artists is assigned to German Expressionism.
The forerunner of The Blue Rider was the Neue Künstlervereinigung München (N.K.V.M: New Artists' Association Munich), instigated by Marianne von Werefkin, Alexej von Jawlensky, Adolf Erbslöh and German entrepreneur, art collector, aviation pioneer and musician Oscar Wittenstein[de]. The N.K.V.M was co-founded in 1909 and Kandinsky (as its first chairman) organized the exhibitions of 1909 and 1910. Even before the first exhibition, Kandinsky introduced the so-called "four square meter clause" into the statutes of the N.K.V.M due to a difference of opinion with the painter Charles Johann Palmié; this clause would give Kandinsky the lever to leave the N.K.V.M in 1911. In 1911, Palmié allowed Kandinsky and Marc to leave the association and organize the first Blue Rider exhibition. The Blue Rider was thus a spin-off from the N.K.V.M.[citation needed]
When there were repeated disputes among the conservative forces in the N.K.V.M, which flared up due to Kandinsky's increasingly abstract painting, he resigned the chairmanship on 10 January 1911 but remained in the association as a simple member. His successor was Adolf Erbslöh. In June, Kandinsky developed plans for his activities outside of the N.K.V.M. He intended to publish a "kind of almanac" which could be called Die Kette (The Chain). On 19 June, he pitched his idea to Marc and won him over by offering him the co-editing of the book.[citation needed]
The name of the movement is the title of a painting that Kandinsky created in 1903, but it is unclear whether it is the origin of the name of the movement as Professor Klaus Lankheit learned that the title of the painting had been overwritten.[1] Kandinsky wrote 20 years later that the name is derived from Marc's enthusiasm for horses and Kandinsky's love of riders, combined with a shared love of the color blue.[1] For Kandinsky, blue was the color of spirituality; the darker the blue, the more it awakened human desire for the eternal (as he wrote in his 1911 book On the Spiritual in Art).
Within the group, artistic approaches and aims varied from artist to artist; however, the artists shared a common desire to express spiritual truths through their art. They believed in the promotion of modern art; the connection between visual art and music; the spiritual and symbolic associations of color; and a spontaneous, intuitive approach to painting. Members were interested in European medieval art and primitivism, as well as the contemporary, non-figurative art scene in France. As a result of their encounters with Cubist, Fauvist and Rayonist ideas, they moved towards abstraction.[citation needed]
Der Blaue Reiter organized exhibitions in 1911 and 1912 that toured Germany. They also published an almanac featuring contemporary, primitive and folk art, along with children's paintings. In 1913, they exhibited in the first German Herbstsalon.[citation needed]
In 1923, Kandinsky, Feininger, Klee and Alexej von Jawlensky formed the group Die Blaue Vier (The Blue Four) at the instigation of painter and art dealer Galka Scheyer. Scheyer organized Blue Four exhibitions in the United States from 1924 onward.
An extensive collection of paintings by Der Blaue Reiter is exhibited in the Städtische Galerie in the Lenbachhaus in Munich.[citation needed]
Almanac
Franz Marc, The Tower of Blue Horses, 1913 (missing since 1945)
Conceived in June 1911, Der Blaue Reiter Almanach (The Blue Rider Almanac) was published in early 1912 by Piper in an edition that sold approximately 1100 copies; on 11 May, Franz Marc received the first print. The volume was edited by Kandinsky and Marc; its costs were underwritten by the industrialist and art collector Bernhard Koehler, a relative of Macke. It contained reproductions of more than 140 artworks, and 14 major articles. A second volume was planned, but the start of World War I prevented it. Instead, a second edition of the original was printed in 1914, again by Piper.[2]
The contents of the Almanac included:
Marc's essay "Spiritual Treasures," illustrated with children's drawings, German woodcuts, Chinese paintings, and Pablo Picasso's Woman with Mandolin at the Piano[3]
an article by French critic Roger Allard on Cubism
Arnold Schoenberg's article "The Relationship to the Text", and a facsimile of his song "Herzgewächse"
The art reproduced in the Almanac marked a dramatic turn away from a Eurocentric and conventional orientation. The selection was dominated by primitive, folk and children's art, with pieces from the South Pacific and Africa, Japanese drawings, medieval German woodcuts and sculpture, Egyptian puppets, Russian folk art, and Bavarian religious art painted on glass. The five works by Van Gogh, Cézanne, and Gauguin were outnumbered by seven from Henri Rousseau and thirteen from child artists.[4]
From January 1912 through July 1914, the exhibition toured Europe with venues in Cologne, Berlin, Bremen, Hagen, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Budapest, Oslo, Helsinki, Trondheim and Göteborg.[6]
Second exhibition
From February 12 through April 2, 1912, the Second exhibition of the editorial board of Der Blaue Reiter (Zweite Ausstellung der Redaktion Der Blaue Reiter) showed works in black-and-white at the New Art Gallery of Hans Goltz (Neue Kunst Hans Goltz) in Munich.[7]
Other shows
The artists of Der Blaue Reiter also participated in these other exhibitions:
Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky was a Russian painter and art theorist. Kandinsky is generally credited as one of the pioneers of abstraction in western art. Born in Moscow, he spent his childhood in Odessa, where he graduated from Odessa Art School. He enrolled at the University of Moscow, studying law and economics. Successful in his profession, he was offered a professorship at the University of Dorpat. Kandinsky began painting studies at the age of 30.
Alexej Georgewitsch von Jawlensky, surname also spelt as Yavlensky, was a Russian expressionist painter active in Germany. He was a key member of the New Munich Artist's Association, Der Blaue Reiter group and later Die Blaue Vier.
Franz Moritz Wilhelm Marc was a German painter and printmaker, one of the key figures of German Expressionism. He was a founding member of Der Blaue Reiter, a journal whose name later became synonymous with the circle of artists collaborating in it.
Blue Horses is a 1911 painting by German painter and printmaker Franz Marc (1880–1916).
The Pinakothek der Moderne is a modern art museum, situated in central Munich's Kunstareal.
The Lenbachhaus is a building housing the Städtische Galerie art museum in Munich's Kunstareal.
Marianne von Werefkin was a Russian artist, whose work is celebrated as a central part of German Expressionism.
The Neue Künstlervereinigung München (N.K.V.M.), was an Expressionism art group based in Munich. The registered association was formed in 1909 and prefigured Der Blaue Reiter, the first modernist secession which is regarded as a forerunner and pathfinder for Modern art in 20th-century Germany.
The Museum Ostwall is a museum of modern and contemporary art in Dortmund, Germany. It was founded in the late 1940s, and has been located in the Dortmund U-Tower since 2010. The collection includes paintings, sculptures, objects and photographs from the 20th century, plus over 2,500 graphics, spanning Expressionism through classic modern art to the present day.
The Museum Wiesbaden is a two-branch museum of art and natural history in the Hessian capital of Wiesbaden, Germany. It is one of the three Hessian State museums, in addition to the museums in Kassel and Darmstadt.
The Yellow Sound is an experimental theater piece originated by the Russian artist Wassily Kandinsky. Created in 1909, the work was first published in The Blue Rider Almanac in 1912.
Klänge is a book by the Russian expressionist artist Wassily Kandinsky. Published in an edition of 345 in Munich in late 1912, the work is a famous early example of an artist's book, containing both poems and woodcuts by the artist, forming two parallel strands, each involving a loose progression. One of three seminal books that Kandinsky published between 1911 and 1912 - the other two being Concerning the Spiritual in Art and Der Blaue Reiter Almanac that he edited with Franz Marc - Klänge was to have a direct and lasting influence on Expressionism, Dada and Russian Futurism.
[Kandinsky] began writing prose-poems, composing 38 altogether between 1908 and 1912. In 1913 these were published by Piper Verlag under the title Sounds, accompanied by colour and black-and-white woodcuts. in these Dadaistic poems, Kandinsky employs a method borrowed from young children's early attempts at speech; through constant repetition and babbling words are emptied of their meaning, so that only the pure sound remains. It is Kandinsky's aim to uncover this "pure sound" of language, the sound which "sets the soul vibrating."
"We fought for painting, but painting alone will not suffice. I had the idea of a synthetic book that removed half of the old, narrow conceptions, breaking down the walls between the arts.... and finally prove that the problem of art is not a problem of form but a problem of spiritual content." Kandinsky,
The Barmer Ruhmeshalle is a historic building in the Barmen district of the German town of Wuppertal, originally built as a hall of fame. It was officially known as the Kaiser Wilhelm- und Friedrich-Ruhmeshalle and later as the Haus der Jugend.
Charles Johann Palmié (1863-1911) is a pointillist/Neo-Impressionist painter noted for being a founding member with Wassily Kandinsky in 1909 of NKVM which prefigured Der Blaue Reiter, the first modernist secession which is regarded as a forerunner and pathfinder for Modern art in 20th-century Germany and for painting with Claude Monet in Giverny, France in 1906.
The Franz Marc Museum is a museum located in Kochel am See, Upper Bavaria, dedicated to German Expressionist painter Franz Marc. The museum shows paintings by Franz Marc, and also works of art of his contemporaries and other important artists of the 20th century, in a permanent and in temporary exhibitions.
Elisabeth Ivanowna Epstein (1879–1956) was a Russian painter.
The Blue Rider is an oil painting executed in Bavaria in 1903 by the Russian emigré artist Wassily Kandinsky. It is now held in a private collection in Zürich, and shares its name with an almanac and the art movement he would co-found with Franz Marc in the early 1910s.
Blue Horse I is an oil painting by Franz Marc completed in 1911. It is one of the painter's most famous works and is part of the collection of the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus in Munich. The painting was part of several exhibitions that Franz Marc and fellow Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky presented to the public under the name Der Blaue Reiter from late 1911 until 1914.
Erster Deutscher Herbstsalon was the title of an art exhibition that was organized in 1913 by Herwarth Walden in Berlin.
References
John E. Bowlt, Rose-Carol Washton Long. The Life of Vasilii Kandinsky in Russian art: a study of "On the spiritual in art" by Wassily Kandinsky. Pub l. Newtonville, Mass. USA. 1980. ISBN0-89250-131-6ISBN0-89250-132-4
Wassily Kandinsky, M. T. Sadler (Translator) Concerning the Spiritual in Art. Dover Publ. (Paperback). 80 pp.ISBN0-486-23411-8. or: Lightning Source Inc. Publ. (Paperback). ISBN1-4191-1377-1
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