Gabriele Munter Painting by Wassily Kandinsky

Gabriele Munter was a famous female artist who is captured here by Kandinsky working outdoors. It is not unusual for artists to study others at work, and was particularly common during the impressionist era, when the members would regularly spend time in each other's company.

We find the artist standing in a garden or perhaps a park, concentrating hard as she makes use of a large easel stand. She delicately starts to put together her composition and will no doubt occasionally look up to compare her brushwork with the actual scene of which she is painting. She wears a long blue cloak, perhaps a simple attire that will protect her best clothes from the effects of oils and other painting materials. To her right are a number of infant trees which stand tentatively upwards. The ground is clear, created by Kandinsky with strokes of browns and yellows, but without leaving any great detail as such.

Gabriele Münter was Berlin-born and worked in the expressionist style for many years. She was a colleague of Kandinsky's during his time in Germany. She would have been around twenty six at the time of this painting and it is pleasing to see women being allowed into some notable artist collectives during this period, having been disregarded unfairly for so many centuries. The portrait itself found here is dated at 1903, and can now be found at the The Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus in Munich, Germany, alongside a number of other Kandinsky paintings.

The style of this portrait can be considered relatively traditional as compared to his later pieces, perhaps somewhere between impressionism and expressionism. His later abstract pieces would be entirely different to what we see here, and more in line with the classic Russian constructivist pieces by Malevich, such as Black Square, Black Circle and Black Cross. Kandinsky was a perfect link between the brilliance of both Russian and German art and showed what was possible when the two influences were combined.