Transcript:Gabriele Münter (1877–1962) was at the forefront of experimental art in Europe during the first half of the twentieth century. Her connection to the United States and her early adoption of the photographic medium, however, are lesser known aspects of her career. From 1898 to 1900, the artist visited maternal relatives in this country with her sister, Emmy. The journey proved crucial to her creative development and recalled her parents’ earlier years living in the U.S. as immigrants before returning to Prussia (now Germany).

Münter arrived in New York Harbor and toured the city before traveling on to Missouri, Arkansas, and Texas. She kept a pocket calendar and relayed to family in Germany her stories of acclimating to rural and urban life. Münter also filled several sketchbooks, sharpening her skills as a draftswoman. Critically, she began practicing photography—using at least one borrowed camera—and visited a professional studio operated by relatives in Marshall, Texas. Around her twenty-third birthday, Münter purchased her first camera, a No. 2 Bulls-Eye. The Eastman Kodak Company marketed this device as widely accessible to middle-class consumers due to its portability, roll film, and “snap shot” capabilities.

Within months, she had taken hundreds of photographs, compiling a selection in a small album. Her subjects spanned from landscapes to still lifes, but Münter’s primary focus was people. Even as a beginner, she showed a confidence and willingness to experiment that pushed her beyond the conventions of the popular box camera.

Münter’s keen interest in this emerging medium persisted after she returned to Europe, informing her subsequent career. She invoked a sense of photographic immediacy in her paintings, later describing them as “moments of my life” and “instantaneous visual experiences.” Though Münter did not exhibit her photographs during her lifetime, this work demonstrates her early commitment to form and composition, and her talent for finding meaning in the everyday.

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Gabriele Münter used her No. 2 Bulls-Eye Kodak camera to take a variety of photographs—from instantaneous captures outside, or “snap shots,” to long exposures indoors. These images from her U.S. period (1898–1900) reveal an early sensitivity to light and framing, as well as a steady grasp of her camera’s full potential.

Münter often adapted the camera to her own methods. Rather than holding the device at her midsection to look through the top-mounted viewfinder, she positioned it higher on her chest, creating compositions of her own design. Her shadow sometimes stretches into the foreground, as if she had deliberately inserted herself into the image.

In other instances, she set the camera on furniture, the floor, or even in the brush of a riverbed to achieve new vantage points. By layering elements in the fore-, middle-, and background, Münter created a sense of movement and pushed her exploration of depth and perception. Many of these experiments proved formative to her lifelong, multidisciplinary practice.

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Gabriele Münter considered portrait painting “the boldest and the most difficult, the most spiritual, the most extreme task for the artist.” She strove to transcend mere outward appearance, aiming instead to capture the sitter’s “inner life.” Her vision suggests an empathy toward other people and an astute understanding of the human condition.

Her early forays into portraiture reveal techniques she developed during her itinerant years, particularly in Paris in 1906–07. There, she encountered the Fauves (“wild beasts”), including Henri Matisse, whose daring use of nonnaturalistic color signaled new directions in art. Upon returning to Germany, Münter adopted an expressive palette, portraying neighbors, friends, and artistic colleagues.

An emphasis on the human figure reemerged during her years in Scandinavia, from 1915 to 1920, as she navigated the complicated affiliations and differences of her émigré status. Whether painting solitary figures or groups, she employed a more graphic style and softer colors. In the following decade, without regular access to a dedicated studio, Münter described her sketchbook as a constant companion. She filled its pages with drawings of people she furtively observed from city to city.

In 1952, Münter reflected on her sustained commitment to figuration: “The task of representing the human being is so great that I never felt myself tempted to go beyond it, for example to dissolve the human appearance, to submit it to willful reconstructions and to replace it with non-objective imagery.”

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This landscape photograph of her Aunt Annie Hamilton's house set against the arid landscape of Plainview, Texas is considered by many to be Gabriele Münter's first photograph. It appears in the small album Münter compiled from her U.S. period with an inscription beneath in her handwriting that reads “Home Sweet Home at Aunt Annie's,” indicating Münter's use of American vernacular.

The empty chairs in front of the house are an early iteration of a motif that appears in her later paintings suggesting an absence. This toying with absence and presence persists throughout Münter's body of work. This is typical of her to continue to return to or rigorously investigate certain motifs or subjects.

I love to find these echoes throughout her work, especially between her early photographs from the U.S. and her paintings, because you can really begin to see the ways in which her photography from this period shaped her eye and her creative spirit.

This photograph was taken in 1899 prior to when Münter was using her own camera. She purchased an early box camera with money she received from her sister Emmy for her 23rd birthday in February of 1900. Beforehand, it's likely the case that Münter had been photographing with at least one camera that she borrowed from a family member. We know this from several photographs like this one that Münter took in Plainview, Texas.

This photograph has a rectangular aspect ratio, distinguishing it from the photographs taken with her number two bullseye, which produced square images. Her early photographs in Plainview capture south and southwestern life in landscape, demonstrating a clear interest in lifestyle, culture, and aesthetics of the region.

Grappling with culture shock from her more metropolitan roots, Münter took an interest in farm life, seemingly barren landscapes, and modest storefronts. In her photographs, she begins to adopt certain stylistic and compositional choices that persist throughout her body of U.S. photographs.

Several of these strategies carry over into her later painting practice. You might notice several empty chairs scattered throughout her paintings, like in “After Tea” or “Kandinsky and Erma Bossi” amongst others.

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The sitter in this photograph is Mary Allen, whose maiden name was Bruce before she married Münter's late uncle William Schueber. After William's death, she married Jonathan Gaddis Allen. She lived with her family in Marshall, Texas, a major center of trade and industry at the turn of the 20th century.

This portrait is one of several that demonstrates Münter's nuanced understanding of light, whether she was working indoors and experimenting with “flashlight photography” or tracking sun positioning outdoors. Here, Münter’s subject is both front and backlit from a light source behind the camera, as well as from the light shining in from a window to her right. This would've been quite difficult to achieve.

Although Münter's mass produced camera had been advertised to the amateur photographer, her number two bullseye was not a simple snapshot camera, what we today would think of as a point and shoot. It had two time settings, one for instantaneous captures and another for long exposures.

It also had three different aperture settings. Since this photograph was taken indoors, it would've required a longer exposure time, the timing of which Münter would've had to determine herself. This photograph was taken some time between May and July of 1900, just a few short months after Münter first acquired her camera in February.

It is remarkable that she was able to take such sophisticated photographs within this short period of time, and it calls attention to her quick adoption of the medium. Although Münter's photography practice was likely self-taught, she had familial ties to a local photography studio in Marshall through Mary Allen. Mary's brother Thomas Jefferson Bruce operated a studio with his business partner Harry Corti, called Bruce and Corti, which we know Münter visited during her stay. In fact, professional photography was a family business. Mary and Thomas's father had run his own studio as well. It is possible that Münter received guidance from her family members as she honed her skillset and developed her practice.

We might wonder the extent to which Münter's proximity to a professional photography studio influenced her own photographic eye. After all, portraiture was by far Münter's most frequent subject. Of the roughly 400 photographs she took while in the U.S., nearly 200 are of people. Behind Mary Allen in this photograph is a sheet not unlike a backdrop used in a photography studio. Münter deployed a makeshift backdrop in at least one other photograph of relatives in Arkansas, and often thoughtfully arranged her subjects for portraits as a professional photographer might do in their studio.

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Albertine Happel was Gabriele Münter's aunt who came to the United States from Prussia, now Germany, in 1845 when she was six years old. Albertine married Hartman Happel, and they had six children. Hartman had passed away by the time Münter visited St. Louis in 1898. She returned again in 1900, this time with her No. 2 Bulls-Eye Kodak camera. It was on the second trip that she took this photograph of her aunt.

This work is an excellent example of Münter's experimental approach to photography. It's difficult to know where to begin with this photograph as there are so many interesting points of entry.

For one, Munter positions her camera on a table, emphasizing a pair of salt and pepper grinders in the foreground which tower to the right of her aunt. The No. 2 Bulls-Eye had long exposure times for indoor photographs such as this one, and it would've been essential to keep the camera steady to avoid a blurry picture.

To our knowledge, Münter did not use a tripod to take photographs. Instead, she often used her body to steady her camera, or in some cases, furniture, railings or even the brush of a riverbed. This photograph is also one of several that Münter manually trimmed. While the No. 2 Bulls-Eye camera produced square photographs that were roughly three and a half by three and a half inches, the original print of this photograph is rectangular in shape and is two and three eighths by three and seven sixteenths inches.

Perhaps Münter would cut certain prints to alter the compositions. This level of engagement with her photographs on the level of formal arrangement to the material print implies a depth of rigor and creativity to her practice that went beyond the mere conventions of her early box camera.

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Gabriele Münter frequently mined the confines of her immediate surroundings and domestic objects of personal significance for her still life compositions. Gabriele Münter, very interestingly, is bridging multiple genres. This painting from circa 1908 to ‘09, “Christmas Still Life”, is an interior scene, presumably the artist's home either in Munich or in the village of Murnau, but there are also a number of still life tableaus that are sprinkled throughout the composition. She didn’t need to go in search of subject matter but readily found it immediately in front of her.

In the upper right of the canvas, we have a mirror that is reflecting back to us a full-length feminine-presenting figure that is presumably the artist herself at her easel. In this way, “Christmas Still Life” challenges perception. The figure takes on this kind of ethereal quality and appears to gaze over her shoulder, perhaps towards the subject of her work, suggesting she may be joining the viewer in the act of looking rather than returning their gaze.

This is something that Gabriele Münter would experiment with across a number of drawings and paintings; this idea of reflection or the reflected surface, whether it's in mirrors, a pane of glass, and a number of other surfaces.

This painting is related to another work on view in this gallery, “Interior” from 1908 from the collection of the Museum of Modern Art. Both paintings draw attention to everyday objects that are often overlooked in art though from different vantage points. In “Interior”, we get a very close view of the interior scene, whereas in “Christmas Still Life”, we see more fully the artist's studio or her domestic surroundings. Both point to Gabriele Münter's multidimensional practice, paintings that she was both producing herself and collecting.

If one looks closely at “Christmas Still Life” you'll see on the left a top of the purple red tablecloth, a small bird figurine that appears in the nearby painting “Interior”. Also reappearing in “Interior” is the textile from the lower right corner of “Christmas Still Life”. This shooting star and a crescent moon against this blue sky and the top of a red tree peeking out.

This is most likely an allusion to Gabriele Münter's appliquéd, an embroidered textile “Apple Tree with Shooting Star,” which was interpreted and produced around 1903 to ’04 after designed by her creative and romantic partner, Vasily Kandinsky.

In “Christmas Still Life”, we see the upper portion of this textile versus in the nearby “Interior” we see the lower part. So together, these two paintings nearly reconstruct the apple tree textile, whereas viewed separately, the motif remains an inscrutable fragment of a larger puzzle.

Oftentimes in Gabriele Münter's paintings, we see these various fragments, these pieces of a puzzle that begin to make sense in some way but are often ultimately left with some sense of mystery. She offers these clues to her personal and artistic life, but she also withholds some information. She leaves some sense that we as the viewer bring our own lived experience, our own ideas to the painting, and that some things will never be fully understood.

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Gabriele Münter (1877–1962) was at the forefront of experimental art in Europe during the first half of the twentieth century. As she tested the potential and limits of visual communication, Münter found inspiration in her everyday world. She revitalized the traditionally lesser-regarded genres of landscape, still life, and portraiture, unlocking their capacity for radical originality. Rather than portraying her surroundings with illusionistic realism, the artist spoke of “feeling the contents of things” and “conveying an essence.” Yet the simplicity of her images often belies their layered complexity. This exhibition reframes Münter’s rigorous practice and underscores her deep commitment to subjects grounded in life—thereby challenging modernist narratives that privilege nonrepresentational art.

Münter’s work reflects the creative possibilities inherent in place and community. On view for the first time in the United States are early photographs Münter took during her extended stay in this country from 1898 to 1900. At age twenty-three, she acquired a portable box camera and honed her understanding of composition and light. Her “great leap forward,” as she later described her expressive turn, came in 1908 when she returned to her native Germany after formative journeys abroad, where she began developing her distinctive palette. This breakthrough led to Münter’s founding affiliation with two important artist collectives: Neue Künstlervereinigung München (New Artists’ Association of Munich, 1909–11) and Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider, 1911–14). The transnational and wide-ranging approach of the latter especially resonated with her cosmopolitan sensibilities.

Fluent in multiple languages, Münter moved easily across linguistic boundaries and cultivated an extensive international network. From 1915 to 1920, overlapping with World War I, she lived in exile in neutral Sweden and Denmark. A rich exchange with Nordic modernisms, through exhibitions and personal connections, prompted shifts in her artistic style. Her paintings of the 1920s and ’30s, produced in France and Germany, illustrate her experimentation and adaptation during a time of expanding opportunities for women and mounting political unrest. These experiences laid the foundation for a life defined by broad curiosity—one rooted in local encounters yet profoundly informed by a belief in our shared humanity.

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This painting is “Living Room in Murnau” or “Interior” from circa 1910. It depicts Gabriele Münter's bedroom in her house in Murnau where she predominantly lived. She had bought this house in 1909 and would maintain it until the end of her life. But because it had no electricity or running water until the 1930s, it was very much initially a summertime country house. Nonetheless, the house was a site of gathering and creativity. Very much underscoring the possibilities of place and the communities that lift us up.

We see outside of the open window that night has fallen and this dark inscrutable scene beyond the window contrasts with the wonderful electric greens and yellows that decorate the walls and this sense of life within the bedroom.

Leading us into the scene is this striped, multicolored carpet cutting across the center of the composition and off to the left through the open doorway we see a figure reclining, which is Vasily Kandinsky, and he appears to be reclining in bed reading a book or otherwise in a state of repose.

This is a scene that very much rewards close looking. We see in the foreground on the right, a pair of slippers just waiting to be slipped on, as well as a pair of heeled shoes at the top of the carpet. There is a top, a painted vanity, a mirror with a reflected surface, which may or may not be legible.

This painting very much demonstrates the ways in which Gabriele Münter was such a brilliant colorist. She could create these really striking color harmonies and contrast with the red brown floor and the green yellow wall, and that darkened blue beyond the window showing the evening tide has fallen.

It is a study in bright illumination, these yellows, greens, and ochre standing in contrast with the darkness outside the window. It is much like a photograph harkening back to Gabriele Münter's early practice in photography. The fact that she trained her compositional eye as an amateur photographer.

The house of Murnau very much functioned as a place of solace, as a refuge from the bustling city in Munich. And folks like Gabriele Münter and Vasily Kandinsky who were in search of this so-called authenticity or simplicity to alleviate the travail of urban life. For them, Murnau very much functioned in that way as a site of refuge and tranquility.

It was from this site that Gabriele Münter would take her long walks and take her bike to go cycling into the countryside and then always come back to her house here to work.

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Throughout her career, Gabriele Münter painted people within lived spaces. These interior scenes focus less on the identities of the figures than on psychological states. She often combined the distinct features of known models with universal human characteristics, and at times juxtaposed figures and objects so that they merged into a pseudo still-life tableau. In doing so, she not only reinvigorated traditional portrait and still-life genres but also occasionally upended them altogether with playful fluidity.

Many of Münter’s interiors are deliberately ambiguous or layered with meaning, encouraging slow and close looking. Glimpses of her broader creative production—from reverse glass paintings to embroidery designs—appear within her paintings, forming quiet declarations of her individuality and selfhood. These allusions to the artist at work illuminate the delicate balance she struck between private and public life.

Münter did not shy away from the uneasy or unresolved aspects of human experience. As she explained late in life: “When I begin to paint, it’s like leaping suddenly into deep waters, and I never know beforehand whether I will be able to swim.” By staying vulnerable and open to experimentation, she imbued her paintings with latent tension and a sense of unpredictability.