Picture "Flower Still Life" (1955) (Unique piece)
Picture "Flower Still Life" (1955) (Unique piece)
Quick info
unique piece | monogrammed | inscribed | gouache and ink on wove paper | framed | size 81.5 x 64.5 cm
Detailed description
Picture "Flower Still Life" (1955) (Unique piece)
In 1931, Gabriele Münter permanently settled in Murnau, Germany and from then on focused on her studies of nature and the subject of floral still lifes. The 1955 work, created in gouache and ink bears witness to her intensive artistic exploration of this subject. A summery garden bouquet of zinnias, delphiniums, flax flowers and forget-me-nots radiates against a monochrome background.
It's a beautiful thought that Gabriele Münter wandered through her lush garden in Murnau to pick these flowers and then immortalise them in the quiet of her studio. "After a short period of agony, I made a great leap - from painting nature more or less impressionistically - to feeling the content, abstracting it, and giving an extract," recalls the artist in her diary.
Gouache and ink on chamois-coloured wove paper, 1955, monogrammed and inscribed with the factory number "BB 49/55" and "Motiv 33d". With a written confirmation from the Gabriele Münter- und Johannes Eichner-Stiftung, Munich, dated 9 November 2023, that the work is listed in the artist's workbook from 1955 under the number BB 49. Motif size/sheet size 43 x 59 cm. Size in frame 81.5 x 64.5 cm as shown.
Producer: ARTES Kunsthandelsgesellschaft mbH, Bödekerstraße 13, 30161 Hannover, Deutschland E-Mail: info@kunsthaus-artes.de
About Gabriele Münter
1877-1962
Gabriele Münter was an Expressionist painter and a member of the New Munich Artists' Association but did not belong to the Blaue Reiter movement.
Gabriele Münter became known as Wassily Kandinsky's companion. She saved a significant part of his works through the war and post-war period and later made them known to the public, together with paintings by artist friends of the Blaue Reiter and her own works.
When Gabriele Münter bought a house in Murnau in 1909, which she lived in during the summer with her partner Kandinsky, the idyllically situated domicile soon developed into a centre of the avant-garde. Marc, Macke and Werefkin, Jawlensky were regular guests. They all found much inspiration for their artistic work in the area around the Staffelsee – art history likes to describe these years surrounding the founding of the Blaue Reiter as the "Murnau period".
With the beginning of the First World War and the separation from Kandinsky, turbulent years followed for Münter. In 1931, she moved to Murnau for good. The landscape in the foothills of the Bavarian Alps plays a major role in her work from this period, as it did at the beginning of the century. When Münter died in Murnau in 1962, she had long been considered, along with Paula Modersohn-Becker, the most important Expressionist painter.
Graphic artwork in the making of which the artist combines at least two graphic production techniques.
A one-of-a-kind or unique piece is a work of art personally created by the artist. It exists only once due to the type of production (oil painting, watercolour, drawing, lost-wax sculpture etc.).
In addition to the classic unique pieces, there are also the so-called "serial unique pieces". They present a series of works with the same colour, motif and technique, manually prepared by the same artist. The serial unique pieces are rooted in "serial art", a genre of modern art that aims to create an aesthetic effect through series, repetitions, and variations of the same objects or themes or a system of constant and variable elements or principles.
The historical starting point is considered to be Claude Monet's "Les Meules" (1890/1891), where, for the first time, a series was created that went beyond a mere group of works. The other artists, who addressed to the serial art, include Claude Monet, Piet Mondrian and above all Gerhard Richter.