Der Blaue Reiter's expressionistic work was created in part as a coloristic counterbalance to Paris's Cubist Avant-monochromatic Garde's formal investigations. While Braque and Picasso focused on the form by restricting their palettes to browns and greys, Der Blaue Reiter artists focused on color and speculated on its metaphorical connotations. Furthermore, Der Blaue Reiter members were closely involved with Cubism experimentation, Russian Futurism, and a plethora of other European spinoff organizations. While all of these current art aesthetic components were used in their works, they were always embedded inside the painters' intense study of expressive color.