page_title: Gabriele Münter
section_title: Later years
hierarchical_section_title: Gabriele Münter / Later years
caption_attribution_description: Haus von Gabriele Münter in Murnau am Staffelsee Creator: Heide Bauer
context_page_description: Gabriele Münter was a German expressionist painter who was at the forefront of the Munich avant-garde in the early 20th century. She studied and lived with the painter Wassily Kandinsky and was a founding member of the expressionist group Der Blaue Reiter.
context_section_description: When World War I began, Münter and Kandinsky relocated to Switzerland. In 1914, Kandinsky returned to Russia without her, and his marriage in 1917 to Nina Andreevskaya marked the end of Münter and Kandinsky's relationship. Subsequently, there was a period of inactivity in her art career. She returned a number of paintings and drawings to Kandinsky, and stored other pieces in a warehouse for many years. She resumed painting in the late 1920s after she had moved back to Germany with Johannes Eichner after the war.
  In the 1930s, as tension started to grip Europe, and modernist movements were condemned in Germany by the Nazi government, she had all of the art work done by her, Kandinsky, and the other members of the Blaue Reiter transported to her house, where she hid them. In spite of her financial problems, she preserved them with care during World War II. Through several house searches, the pieces were never found.
  On her eightieth birthday, Münter gave her entire collection, which consisted of more than 80 oil paintings and 330 drawings, to the Städtische Galerie in the Lenbachhaus in Munich. In 1956, Münter received a few awards such as the Culture Prize from the City of Munich. Münter's work was exhibited in the 1960s in the US for the first time and was shown at Mannheim Kunsthalle in 1961. When she was with Johannes Eichner, she still continued to represent the movement.
  The Gabrielle Münter and Johannes Eichner foundation was established and has become a valuable research center for Münter's art, as well as the art that was done by the Blaue Reiter group. Münter lived the rest of her life in Murnau, traveling back and forth to Munich. She died at home in Murnau am Staffelsee on 19 May 1962.
  In 2018, the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art of Copenhagen, Denmark, ran an exhibition from May to August with about 130 works by Gabriele Münter, many of which were being shown for the first time, in the artist's first comprehensive retrospective in decades.
caption: Gabriele Münter's house in Murnau
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