The Blue Rider [antikvár]

THE BLUE RIDER The name 'Blue Rider' symbolizes, for us, that renewal of German art which occurred in Munich during the years immediately before the First World War. It recalls a book, two exhibitions, and a fraternity of artists sharing a common ideal. However, the Blue Rider was never a movement nor, strictly speaking, an exhibiting society. It was an idea in the mind of one man, a Russian named Vasily Kandinsky. In 1896, at the age of 30, he had abandoned a promising academic career in order to devote himself to painting, which had seemed to him, in his youth, 'an inadmissible luxury for a Russian'. He was attracted to Munich, whose art schools enjoyed a high reputation in Russia at that time. He studied at the private school run by the painter Anton Azbe, together with a number of other Russian artists including Ivan Bilibin, Igor Grabar and Dmitri Kardovsky. He was also admitted to the painting class of the great Franz von Stuck, professor at the Munich Academy. Although Kandinsky found the academic study of painting uncongenial, in later life he remembered Stuck's teaching with gratitude. In 1902 he met the young German artist Gabriele Munter, who was to become his constant companion. Miinter described Munich at this time as the 'city ot Jugendstil', and the influence oiJugendstil, the German variant of Art Nouveau, is clearly visible in Kandinsky's earliest paintings from the beginning of this century. In 1904 Kandinsky and Miinter left Munich and set off on their travels. During the next four years they wandered as far afield as Italy, North Africa and Russia. They stayed a whole year in Paris, from summer 1906 to summer 1907, and spent the winter of 1907-8 in Berlin, returning to Bavaria in the spring. Miinter bought a small country house in Murnau, a summer resort a few miles south of Munich. The village and its surroundings provided the inspiration for many of their landscapes of the years 1909-10 (Plate 2). In Murnau the two artists gathered around them a number of Kandinsky's compatriots (Miinter's cottage is still known locally as the 'House of the Russians'). Among them were the painter Alexei von Jawlensky who, like Kandinsky, had studied at Azbe's school, and his companion, Mariamne Vereflrina (Marianne von Werefkin). Another frequent visitor was the Austrian writer and graphic artist Alfred Kubin. The group was essentially Symbolist in orientation; their interests included contemporary mysticism and Wagner's ideas about a synthesis of the arts. They were also appalled by the low standard of art being produced in Munich, as seen in the exhibitions of the Secession and other groups such as Die Scholle. Kandinsky and his friends decided they could do better. In 1909 they founded an exhibiting society called the Neue Künstler- Vereinigung München (New Artists' Association of Munich). Its aims were to promote exhibitions both in Germany and abroad, and to organize lectures, publications and other related events. Kandinsky was the first president, Jawlensky vice-president. Ordinary members included the painter Vladimir Bekhteev, the sculptor Moshe Kogan, and the dancer Aleksandr Sakharov. 3