CategoriesStyles and Movements
The Blue Rider
Der Blaue Reiter: the Munich circle around Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc, 1911–14, which sought spiritual meaning through colour.
No works indexed yet · 10 related artists
No open-access works for The Blue Rider are in the index yet. They will appear here as more collections are indexed.
About
When the jury of a Munich exhibiting society rejected Wassily Kandinsky's abstract Composition V (1911), he and Franz Marc walked out and organised their own exhibition that December under the name Der Blaue Reiter. Both loved blue, and Kandinsky had painted horsemen for years; the rider became an emblem of spiritual striving. It was less a formal association than an editorial and exhibiting partnership.
Its central statement was the almanac Der Blaue Reiter (1912), which set Bavarian glass paintings, children's drawings, Russian folk prints and music by Arnold Schoenberg beside modern painting. Kandinsky's On the Spiritual in Art (1911) argued that colour acts directly on the soul, and Marc painted animals in intense, symbolic colours in The Large Blue Horses (1911). Gabriele Münter, August Macke, Paul Klee and the American Albert Bloch took part. The First World War ended it: Macke and Marc were killed, and Kandinsky returned to Russia.
Related artists
More in Styles and Movements
The New Fauves
The Pictures Generation
The Stars Art Group (Xing Xing)
Traditional Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas
Transavanguardia
Ukiyo-e
Venetian School
Vienna Secession
Viennese Actionism
Washington Color School
Women Artists
Works Progress Administration (WPA)
Yale University School of Art
Young British Artists (YBAs)
Zaire School of Popular Painting
'85 New Wave
19th Century American Art
19th Century American Paintings and Works on Paper
19th Century French Academy
19th Century German Realism
20th Century Art
.jpg%3Fwidth%3D960&w=3840&q=75)
Abstract Art
Abstract Expressionism
.png%3Fwidth%3D960&w=3840&q=75)