Gabriele Munter: Five Things to Know

Gabriele Münter (1877–1957) was a pioneering German Expressionist and co-founder of the influential Blue Rider group. She has recently stepped out from the shadow of her former partner, Wassily Kandinsky, with major museum shows.

Münter combined European folk art with modernism to create bold and colorful portraits and landscapes.

She traveled across the US as a young woman using her Kodak camera to photograph off-beat scenes and candid portraits.

In 1909, she bought a house in Murnau in the Bavarian countryside, which locals called The Russian House because of her partner, Kandinsky, and the international artists who visited.

Notable sale: her 1909 landscape The Blue Garden (My Garden Gate) was sold by Hauser & Wirth for $3m at Frieze Masters fair in London in 2025.

Hidden art: although long separated from Kandinsky, she saved hundreds of his paintings, drawings and prints along with works by other Blue Rider artists from the Nazis in the 1930s and 40s by hiding them in Murnau.

To learn more about out Gabriele Munter, see her HENI News profile.

Gabriele Munter: Contours of a World is on view at the Guggenheim in New York (until April 26, 2026).