Le Cavalier bleu
Der Blaue Reiter ("The Blue Rider") formed in Munich, Germany in 1911. Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc, August Macke, Alexej von Jawlensky, Marianne von Werefkin and others founded the group in response to the rejection of Kandinsky's painting Last Judgment from an exhibition by Neue Künstlervereinigung—another artists' group of which Kandinsky had been a member. The name Der Blaue Reiter derived from Marc's enthusiasm for horses, and from Kandinsky's love of the colour blue. For Kandinsky, blue is the colour of spirituality—the darker the blue, the more it awakens human desire for the eternal (see his 1911 book On the Spiritual in Art). Kandinsky had also titled a painting Der Blaue Reiter (see illustration) in 1903. The intense sculpture and printmaking of Käthe Kollwitz was strongly influenced by Expressionism, which also formed the starting point for the young artists who went on to join other tendencies within the movements of the early 20th century.