Der Blaue Reiter

Der Blaue Reiter, meaning "The Blue Rider," was not a formal art group like Dresden's Die Brücke, but a loose network of artists centered around Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc. The name referred to their joint exhibition and publication projects, with the two artists serving as the sole editors of an almanac that first appeared in May 1912. They staged two shows in Munich, in 1911 and 1912, to present their art theories through the works on display, and later sent traveling exhibitions across Germany and other European cities. The movement dissolved at the start of World War I in 1914. The artists involved are considered key pioneers of 20th-century modern art, and their work falls under German Expressionism.

The group grew out of the Neue Künstlervereinigung München (New Artists' Association Munich, or N.K.V.M.), which was launched in 1909 by Marianne von Werefkin, Alexej von Jawlensky, Adolf Erbslöh, and the entrepreneur Oscar Wittenstein. Kandinsky served as its first chairman and organized its 1909 and 1910 exhibitions. Even before the first show, he had introduced a rule—the "four square meter clause"—into the association's statutes after a disagreement with painter Charles Johann Palmié. This clause later gave him a way to leave the N.K.V.M. in 1911. Tensions grew between Kandinsky and the association's conservative members, especially as his painting became more abstract. In December 1911, the jury rejected his painting *Composition V* for the group's third exhibition. In response, Kandinsky, along with Gabriele Münter, Franz Marc, and others, broke away and quickly organized a rival show in the same venue, the Thannhauser Gallery, in rooms next to the official exhibition. This splinter group called itself Der Blaue Reiter. Years later, Kandinsky recalled anticipating the conflict and having already prepared extensive material: "Our halls were close to the rooms of the NKVM exhibition. It was a sensation. Since I anticipated the 'noise' in good time, I had prepared a wealth of exhibition material for the BR [Blaue Reiter]. So the two exhibitions took place simultaneously. (…) Revenge was sweet!" The show was officially titled the First Exhibition of the Editorial Board of Der Blaue Reiter, reflecting plans for an almanac of the same name. Kandinsky resigned as chairman of the N.K.V.M. on 10 January 1911 but stayed on as a regular member; Adolf Erbslöh took over. By June, Kandinsky was developing plans outside the N.K.V.M., intending to publish a "kind of almanac" possibly called *Die Kette* (The Chain). On 19 June, he pitched the idea to Marc and won him over by offering co-editorship.

The movement's name comes from a 1903 painting by Kandinsky, though it is unclear if that painting directly inspired the group's name—Professor Klaus Lankheit discovered that the painting's title had been overwritten. Kandinsky later wrote that the name combined Marc's love of horses with his own love of riders, plus a shared fondness for the color blue. For Kandinsky, blue was the color of spirituality; the darker the blue, the more it stirred a longing for the eternal, as he explained in his 1911 book *On the Spiritual in Art*. The artists' approaches varied, but they all wanted to express spiritual truths through art. They championed modern art, the link between visual art and music, the symbolic power of color, and a spontaneous, intuitive painting style. They were drawn to European medieval art, primitivism, and the contemporary non-figurative art scene in France. Encounters with Cubist, Fauvist, and Rayonist ideas pushed them toward abstraction. Der Blaue Reiter held exhibitions in 1911 and 1912 that toured Germany, and published an almanac mixing contemporary, primitive, and folk art with children's paintings. In 1913, they took part in the first German Herbstsalon. The group fell apart with the outbreak of World War I in 1914. Franz Marc and August Macke were killed in combat; Kandinsky returned to Russia; Werefkin and Jawlensky fled to Switzerland. Internal disagreements also played a role. The movement lasted only three years, from 1911 to 1914. In 1923, Kandinsky, Lyonel Feininger, Paul Klee, and Jawlensky formed a new group, Die Blaue Vier (The Blue Four), at the urging of painter and dealer Galka Scheyer, who organized their exhibitions in the United States from 1924 onward. A major collection of Der Blaue Reiter paintings is housed in the Städtische Galerie in the Lenbachhaus in Munich.

The end of Der Blaue Reiter also ended Munich's role as a center of avant-garde modern art. The group's ideas were largely forgotten when the Nazis targeted many of the artists, labeling their work "degenerate art," confiscating it, selling it abroad, or destroying it. Selling the paintings had an unintended effect: the works of Der Blaue Reiter became internationally famous and influential. After 1945, their ideas spread more widely outside Germany than within it. Artists from Denmark, Belgium, and the Netherlands—such as Asger Jorn and the CoBrA group—carried on Kandinsky's ideas. In 1949, the Ha...