The new exhibition Expressionists: Kandinsky, Münter and the Blue Rider opens to the public on Thursday, April 25 at Tate Modern in London. It showcases over 130 groundbreaking German Expressionist masterpieces—including paintings, sculpture, photography, performance, and sound—all brought together in the UK for the first time in over sixty years.
Expressionists: Kandinsky, Münter and the Blue Rider
Shortly before the onset of World War I, painters Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc founded Der Blaue Reiter, German for the Blue Rider, in Munich. The radical collective of artists associated with the Blue Rider rejected traditional realism in art. Instead, they used subjective color palettes and symbolic abstracted forms to explore emotional and spiritual ideas.
Comprising of artists from across Europe and the United States, the Blue Rider formed what they called “a union of various countries to serve one purpose”—to transform modern art. Expressionists positions Wassily Kandinsky and Gabriele Münter, rather than Marc, as the key figureheads of the Blue Rider’s collective experimentation with color, abstraction, sound, and light. Kandinsky emigrated from Russia to Munich in the 1890s to study art, where he met Münter, a German painter immersed in the local avant-garde art scene. They enjoyed a professional and personal relationship for ten years, traveling abroad together and strongly influencing each other’s work.
The International “Union” of Modern Artists
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Sign up to our Free Weekly NewsletterAccording to Expressionists, the artists of the Blue Rider orbited around Kandinsky and Münter as a diverse and deeply interconnected network. They dissolved the barriers of nationality, gender, and chosen medium between them to more effectively experiment with artistic expression. The exhibition brings together all the revolutionary facets of the Blue Rider—including Franz Marc’s colorful and evocative animals, powerful sharp-eyed portraits by Marianne von Werefkin, freestyle performance art by Alexander Sacharoff, forward-thinking photographs by Gabriele Münter, and more.
“From the beginning the Blue Rider was less a strict group than a broad-church community of artists,” said Expressionists curator Natalia Sidlina. “They were transnational and were linked through various friendships and relationships—intimate, unconventional and professional—as well as through artistic collaborations, and shared quests and beliefs around spiritual and social renewal.”
Tate Modern Exhibition Details
Expressionists: Kandinsky, Münter and the Blue Rider was curated by Tate Modern in collaboration with Lenbachhaus in Munich, which offered rare access to its prestigious collection of German Expressionist art. The exhibition is on view at the iconic riverside museum in London from April 25 to October 20, 2024.
Viewers can expect to encounter many of the most significant Blue Rider artworks, some of which have never been exhibited in the UK until now. Expressionists also provides fascinating context about Munich as an avant-garde artistic hub in the early 20th century, as well as the efforts of the Blue Rider artists to publish manifestos, curate exhibitions, and otherwise spread their ideas internationally.
