The name 'Blue Rider' sounds a bit mysterious, but it was simply a title they came up with while chatting over coffee one day, according to Kandinsky. In 1909, he joined a new group called the 'New Artists' Association of Munich' where he met the German painter Franz Marc, who shared his view of art as a medium for personal and spiritual expression.īy 1911, Marc and Kandinsky were collaborating to publish an almanac that would be a kind of manifesto for expressionist artists. It was a time when many new ideas – such as Jugendstil, a decorative style inspired by the arts and crafts movement - were sprouting up amid the city's generally staid art scene, but Kandinsky didn't find his niche in any of them. The Russian-born Kandinsky moved to Munich to study art when he was 30 years old, in 1896. 'We should strive not for restriction but for liberation…only on a spot that has become free can something grow.' 'We should never make a god out of is not form (matter) that is generally most important, but content (spirit),' Kandinsky declared in the Almanac. Expression could take any form – a blaze of brushstrokes a sprinkle of musical notes a carved totem or a child's sketch – and the group's exhibitions and almanac showcased the gamut. The Blue Rider artists broke with tradition by rejecting objective ideas of what made art 'good.' What really mattered, they argued, was what each work of art expressed about its creator's inner state. A black hand covers their eyes,' Kandinsky wrote in an essay for the 1912 'Blaue Reiter Almanac,' an unusual catalogue that combined a wide mix of art forms from many times and cultures. Though the group's collective work was cut short by the First World War, its ideas marked a major turning point in art history – the birth of Abstract Expressionism. The Lenbachhaus, a small museum located northwest of the city center, pays homage to the Blaue Reiter (Blue Rider) group, a loose association of kindred spirits founded in 1911 by Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc and other artists. If you spot a blue horse on your next trip to Munich, chances are that you've either been enjoying too much of the local brew, or you're admiring the art at the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus (State Gallery in the Lenbach House).

Traffic rider 1911