Gabriele Münter, aka Fabulous

Amazing woman. Berliner, cosmopolitan, she spoke five languages and had the best luck to inherit a large fortune which she used to travel, went around the world, photographed a lot and then indulged in painting. Somehow she met Kandinsky - still unknown and her teacher-they became a couple, lived and travelled together. Her work began with impressionist influences to move into more expressionist and abstract idioms while her "Russian House" in Murnao was the centre of a circle of artists who would then form important movements such as the Blue Rider (Der Blaue Reiter). After breaking up with Kandinsky, she settled first in Stockholm, then in Copenhagen and finally in Berlin and with her later partner, they managed to save many great works that the Nazi regime would destroy as "degenerated".

Her works are intelligent, and with humour, she has a personal idiom around the way she creates colour units with bright colours and strong contrasts that almost evoke impressions of iridescence. Her subjects alternate between the earthly and the spiritual a pro-modernistic mood, and she is so bold that she does not hesitate to experiment with many different styles.

Although her work and activity were highly influential for German Expressionism and she has been featured both in the Blue Ride exhibitions and later in the Biennale of 1950, and the first Documenta while she had solo exhibitions in Copenhagen and New York, she remains unknown as a member of Expressionism and modernism in general.

Look what she does with the colours. (Oh she should have such a good time when using them!)

At the moment you can see her work in the Royal Academy exhibition "Making Modernism", an exhibition about the German artists of the early 20th century who helped shape European modernism.