(Berlin 1877–1962 Murnau/ Upper Bavaria)
View of the mountain, with the stamp of the estate “Nachlass Gabriele Münter” on the reverse, oil on canvas relined on canvas along three edges, 23 x 17.3 cm, framed

Photo certificate:
Prof. Dr. Helmut Friedel, Gabriele Münter- und Johannes Eichner-Stiftung, Munich, 27.6.1999.

The painting is mentioned under the number L 631 in the inventory book from the Gabriele Münter-und Johannes-Eichner-Stiftung.

Provenance:
Estate of the Artist
Dalzell Hatfield Gallery, Los Angeles – acquired from the above in 1979
Private Collection, Germany

Exhibited:
Laguna Beach, Laguna Beach Museum of Art, Gabriele Münter (1877–1962), 10 January – 28 February 1978

“My concern is looking, painting and drawing – not talking. … And ultimately I’ve grown to be able to control colour as naturally and easily as lines.”
Gabriele Münter

“She [Gabriele Münter] is now looking for a new, controlled, form of expression: powerfully delineated fields of colour, striving towards harmony. Often, the former power of the colouristic urgency of the past comes alive in them.”
Press article from the early 1930s.

Gabriele Münter spent time in France between October 1929 and June 1930, which gave her new inspiration for her work. In early 1931, Gabriele Münter and her partner, Johannes Eichner, returned to her house in Murnau. There, she refocused on her work from the “Blauer Reiter” period, and initially got involved in reverse glass painting. She used powerful, expressive colours predominantly to paint landscapes and still lifes.

It is not only the style of painting that Gabriele Münter initially takes on in her works from the 1930s. She also returns to places that she depicted during the “Blauer Reiter” period, or, in the evenings, flicks through her old sketches under electric light, aiming to use them to create a new painting. Her later pieces are characterised, in particular, by a wide range of forms of expression – all the experience she gleaned during her life as an artist has been included in these works, enabling her to develop a new style of working. This style, and the resulting method of representation, formed the core of the image’s message during the “Blauer Reiter” period. In her pieces created during the 1930s and subsequently, the focus changed: thanks to her extensive repertoire of expression, Gabriele Münter was able to move landscape motifs into the foreground.
In “Blick aufs Gebirge” [Mountain View], she almost entirely foregoes the contours that designate the objects. Instead, she uses perspective in the construction of the image to depict the overall motif, applying colours with great detail and using light/shade modelling. The hilly green meadow in the foreground that slopes down towards the centre of the image draws the viewer to the white house with the striking red roof. The trees, covered in autumn leaves, create a line of sight to the water of the Staffelsee Lake, but also guide the viewer’s gaze over the blueish-green water of the lake to the mountains beyond. The primary and secondary colours in the image evoke the reduced colouring of the works of the “Blauer Reiter” group. Gabriele Münter uses the brilliant red roof of the house to offer a complementary contrast to the grassy areas that feature nuanced shades of green. Simultaneously, it allows the trees (depicted in shades of yellow) to glow with bright sunlight, and the water of the Staffelsee Lake to be accentuated with various blueish-green shades painted in horizontal stripes. The dark rainclouds stand in stark contrast to the sunny brightness of the foreground.
Gabriele Münter was particularly fascinated by natural phenomena on the lake with the rapidly changing shades of colour, and she attempted to capture them in her paintings, such as in this mountain landscape.
“Blick aufs Gebirge” is a flawless example of her lively painting style and powerful palette: the application of colour and composition are as uniform as they are powerful, whilst fluid contours envelop the brightly coloured space. This small-format piece has well earned its place in the artist’s painterly oeuvre.