(Berlin 1877–1962 Murnau/Upper Bavaria)
Snowy landscape near Elmau, signed, dated and inscribed Münter Elmau 22. I.24, oil on cardboard, 32.8 x 40.5 cm, framed, (PS)

This painting is currently being archived by the Gabriele Münter- and Johannes Eichner-Foundation, Munich.

Provenance:
Galerie Wolfgang Ketterer, 24.5.1977, Lot 1350
Galerie Wolfgang Ketterer 5.12.1994, Lot 47
Galerie Maulberger, Munich (acquired there in 1997 by the current owner)
Private Collection North Rhine-Westphalia

After her return from Scandinavia in 1920, Gabriele Münter refocused:
‘From 1915 to 1920 I lived in Scandinavia and enjoyed great artistic success for myself alone, but lost contact with artistic life in Germany. When I returned I remained an outsider and hardly stirred myself to come into my own.’ (1) From 1923 onwards the artist executed a large number of oil paintings depicting landscape motifs of Murnau, Staffelsee and Elmau. The artist spent the turn of the year in Elmau, extending her stay to 20 March. During this period she made numerous studies of the alpine peaks in snow which she brought back with her to Murnau. Starting with the concrete appearance of the Alpine foothills, she represents the scene in a few synthesised surface areas. The wintery, low hanging sun throws deep shadows onto the snowy landscape and mountain forest. The crest of the Wettersteingebirge and sunny alpine slopes are picked out by the glittering sun. A path leads between the snow-covered slopes in shadow on the left, and the field of snow melting in the sunlight on the right, drawing the viewer’s eye into the distance, to the Kranzberg. The powerful application of colour,clearly seen in the brushstrokes, corresponds with the painterly style of manyother works by the artist dating to this period.

Münter also produced these landscape studies after returning to Murnau, as well as the series of new experimental works, which would inform her painting over subsequent years. She turned again and again to motifs based on wintry landscapes and mountain backdrops well into the 1930s.
For this reason, ‘Snowy Landscape near Elmau’ can be accorded a central position within Gabriele Münter’s artistic oeuvre, since it clearly demonstrates Münter seeking ways of aligning her work with styles associated with New Objectivity and measured Modernist tendencies.

(1) Exhibition catalogue, Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich, 29.7.-1.11.1992, Münter – 1877-1962, Retrospektive, Ed. Annegret Hoberg, Helmut Friedel, p.162

“Anyone who looks carefully at my paintings will see the draughtsman in them. Despite all of the colouration, there is a solid, drawn framework there. I generally draw in lines in black with a paintbrush direct onto the cardboard or canvas, before turning to the colour. This is based, as a rule, on a small pencil sketch that I will have made according to my impressions of the motif.” Gabriele Münter, Bekenntnisse und Erinnerungen, Berlin 1952, o. S.