Flower still life

Details

Confirmation was requested for this work from the Gabriele Münter- und Johannes Eichner-Stiftung. This was not available at the time this catalogue was printed. Provenance:Neumeister, Munich 23.5.2012, lot 49;private collection, Munich.

Description

• Balanced and harmonious composition in a vivid colour palette using ornamental reduction of forms
• Mature artistic condensation of the flower motifs repeated and continuously developed over decades
• At the age of almost 80 years old, Münther concentrated on motifs from her immediate surroundings, especially flowers from her own garden in Murnau Floral still lifes played a central role in Gabriele Münter’s work for many decades. In the 1950s, the artist, now over seventy years old, reached a final maturity.

Both formally and in terms of colour, she found a more moderate approach that increasingly moved away from her early expressiveness. However, she retained her own generous pictorial language and bright colour palette, lending vitality and tranquillity to the at first glance modest motif of the floral still life. “In all media, in pencil, ink, ball-point pen, oil on paper and larger oil paintings, she creates a wealth of flower pictures (…) in which she often only places the outlines of the flower heads on the white sheet. Johannes Eichner writes: ‘Otherwise the works become lighter and looser. As Gabriele Münter now goes out into the world less, her motifs shrink… What remains are flowers that come into the house from the garden, an inexhaustible wealth of colour. If a canvas was not immediately available, the painter, as in earlier years, resorted to paper (…). The background usually remained white. A fragrant form of painting developed, in hints, which leaves a lot of white paper within the outlines and places the colours on top as bold spots. Münter also often repeated these floral motifs (…), which were now increasingly appreciated by collectors, in several variations. In the paintings she uses the same compact, rounded depiction for the flowers, but here they are often surrounded by rather angular, heavy contours that clearly set them apart from the mostly matt-coloured background. (…) Overall, Münter’s flower paintings are characterised by an irrepressible liveliness, despite all the repetitions, right into old age.” (from: exhib. cat. Gabriele Münter, Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich and others 1992, no page, before cat. no. 231).