Gabriele Münter, Blumenstillleben auf schwarzem Grund,

Lot description

Unsigned. Work number "B 103" on stretcher on a label and stamped "GABRIELE MÜNTER NACHLASS" verso on canvas. At the beginning of the 1930s, Gabriele Münter permanently moved back to Murnau and built on her expressionist painting from the period of “Der Blauer Reiter”. Along with landscapes, her work focused on floral still lifes, which she presents against a white or, occasionally, dark background. “There remain the flowers, which come into the house from the garden”, writes her second partner, Johannes Eichner. “Inexhaustible abundance of colours” (Gabriele Münter, exh. cat. Lenbachhaus, Munich 1992, no pag.). In this painting, whose use of colour is so extremely appealing, Münter has concentrated entirely on depicting the simple, olive-green vase and the bouquet consisting of begonias, dahlias and bellflowers. The vitality of the composition emerges from the arrangement of flowers, which are only casually placed together and “pour” out over the side of the vase and into the foreground. Here, as in a number of floral still lifes from this period, Münter has summarily delineated the outlines of the vase and the flowers with dark contour lines; the paint is applied in broad, lively brushstrokes. The luminous red, purple, blue and green tones of the flower petals stand out more strongly due to her renunciation of any additional motifs. The dark-blue and black colouring of the background, which is not further defined in any way, is an exceptional feature of this still life. In contrast to a light ground, it makes the colourful flowers stand out radiantly and appear extremely three-dimensional. The “Blumenstillleben auf schwarzem Grund” displays a mastery of composition that becomes characteristic from the middle of the 1930s. This is the period when Münter brought her floral still lifes to their final stage of maturity.