"In 1908, for instance, when I painted my Blue Mountain, I had learned the trick. It came to me as easily and naturally as song to a bird. After that, I worked more and more on my own. When Kandinsky became increasingly interested in abstract art, I also tried my hand, of course, at a few improvisations of the same general nature as his. But I believe I had developed a figurative style of my own, or at least one that suited my temperament, and I have remained faithful to it ever since, with occasional short holidays in the realm of abstraction."
Gabriele Münter was a German expressionist painter who was at the forefront of the Munich avant-garde in the early 20th century. She studied and lived with the painter Wassily Kandinsky and was a founding member of the expressionist group Der Blaue Reiter.
"Our sketchbooks and studies – as well as the paintings and photos, convey the detail of our [Gabriele with Kandinsky, 1905] Tunisian impressions. At times we got along well – at times not at all – we took walks in the city and also in the Belvedere park – it was never boring with my beloved [ Kandinsky ], but we didnt made contact with any other people; he never wanted it."
"As a child, I devoted much of my leisure to drawing sketches of relatives and friends, familiar sights and scenes, a view that suddenly moved me or appealed to me. I always concentrated on depicting nature as I saw or felt it, in terms of lines, and obtaining a kind of psychological likeness which would convey the personality of my model or the mood of the moment."
"But we had no contact with the painters of the Dachau and Worpswede School [where a. o. Paula Modersohn-Becker was settled as starting woman artist]. It was only much later, for instance, that we discovered that Hoelzel had already been experimenting with non-objective compositions as early as 1908. We [the Blaue Reiter artists] were only a group of friends who shared a common passion for painting as a form of self-expression."
"Each of us [the Der Blaue Reiter (Blue Rider) artists] was interested in the work of the other members of our group, much as each of us was also interested in the health and happiness of the others. But we were still far from considering ourselves as a group or a school of art.. .I dont think we were ever as programmatic in out theories, as competitive or a self-assertive, as some of the modern [art] schools of Paris."
"I was never interested in being just modern – I mean in creating a new style. I simply painted in whatever style seemed to suit me best. But Kandinsky was a thinker and had to express his ideas in words, so he constantly formulated new theories of art which he liked to discuss with Kubín, who was also a thinker.."
"..the rejection of impressionistic copies of nature and a move towards sensing the content, abstraction, – expressing the extract.."