Gabriele Münter Lot n° 529

At the nursery, Murnau. Oil on painting cardboard. 1931. approx. 32.5 x 41 cm. Signed and dated lower left. Titled on verso (in his own hand?). In the 1930s Gabriele Münter returned to her beginnings in the "Blaue Reiter". These years are also marked by great productivity, and her travels to Paris and the South of France in 1929/30 give her new impulses. During this phase, the artist began to meticulously and systematically note down her works in workbooks. Paul Klee, whom she had met before the war, served as a model for her. The landscape motifs of this period are again seen, as she herself calls them, "large and simple". Our picture, which shows a view of a market garden with flower beds, mounds of earth and individual buildings in an autumnal mood, also comes from this phase. In the foreground on the left, a person with a wheelbarrow can be seen working on a narrow path between the beds. The foliage of the smaller trees in front of the buildings has already turned yellow. Two mightier deciduous trees and a coniferous tree delimit the trees on the left from the wide landscape in the background. Here, too, Münter contrasts the still more homogeneous areas of colour with dark contours, thus harking back to her early paintings. In 1909 Münter bought a house with a garden in Murnau. Even though the property with its garden played a not insignificant role in her life and she also received many visitors there with Kandinsky, Münter recorded only a few garden views. In 1931 she took up the theme of the garden again and, in the same year as Our Garden, captured her new partner, Johannes Eichner, at work in the garden (My Garden, 1931, oil on canvas, 46 x 55 cm, private collection). Gabriele Münter had particular contact with the park-like Müssig nursery in Murnau, which she visited several times a week according to the accounts of the family of the founder Johann Müssig. The artist's interest there, however, was not only the flowers, but above all the fresh vegetables for her own supply (on this, see Ausst.-Kat.: Gabriele Münter, Die Zeit nach Kandinsky in Murnau, Murnau 2012, p. 150). The work is listed in the estate of Gabriele Münter under no. L 319. It is included in the catalogue raisonné of Gabriele Münter's paintings published by the Gabriele Münter and Johannes Eichner Foundation. Provenance: Estate of the artist, on the verso of the painting board with the estate stamp and the estate number "L 319" as well as a further numbering "929" (labels); Leonard Hutton Galleries, New York, on the verso of the painting board with the label and further label remnants; private collection, Hamburg, acquired from the aforementioned in 1973. Taxation: differential taxation (VAT: Margin Scheme)