Media Release Kandinsky, Marc & Der Blaue Reiter 4 September 2016 – 22 January 2017 For the first time in thirty years, a comprehensive exhibition in Switzerland will be devoted to the fascinating chapter in modern art known as Der Blaue Reiter. The Munich exhibition in 1911 and the art movement of the same name resulted in a revolutionary new art experience. The works by Wassily Kandinsky that belong to the Beyeler Collection will serve as a starting-point to give members of the public an insight into the work of a group of avant-garde artists whose openness and internationalism were interrupted by the First World War. Der Blaue Reiter is the name of the legendary almanac published by Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) and Franz Marc (1880–1916) which appeared in Munich in 1912. In that book, Kandinsky and Marc brought together texts and pictures from different cultures and by different artists. The almanac was intended to document the need for a new beginning in the visual arts at the beginning of the 20th century. It testifies to a revolutionary new understanding of art and the world that centred on the visual representation of ideas rather than the reproduction of visible reality. This can be seen above all in the liberation of colour, which was inspired by the pre-Alpine landscape found to the south of Munich. The ideas that caused Kandinsky and Marc, in the first instance, to move towards abstraction culminated in a turning-point in western views on art that has left its mark on generations of painters – right up until today. Featuring around 70 artworks and 90 exhibits in all, the exhibition will present the Almanac and, particularly through major groups of works by Kandinsky and Marc, illustrate the revolution in painting that took place between 1908 and 1914. The exhibition „Kandinsky, Marc & Der Blaue Reiter“ is being supported by: Beyeler-Stiftung Hansjörg Wyss, Wyss-Foundation L. + Th. La Roche-Stiftung Novartis Walter Haefner Stiftung Communication partner for the exhibition: Exclusive ticket pre-sale in all Manor stores. 20% discount with Manor card. Press images: are available for download at http://pressimages.fondationbeyeler.ch Further information: Elena DelCarlo, M.A. Head of Communications Tel. + 41 (0)61 645 97 21, [email protected], www.fondationbeyeler.ch Fondation Beyeler, Beyeler Museum AG, Baselstrasse 77, CH-4125 Riehen, Switzerland Fondation Beyeler opening hours: 10 am - 6 pm daily, Wednesdays until 8 pm Media Release Kandinsky, Marc & Der Blaue Reiter 4 September 2016 – 22 January 2017 For the first time in thirty years, a comprehensive exhibition in Switzerland is being devoted to the fascinating chapter in modern art known as Der Blaue Reiter. The exhibition held in Munich in 1911 and the art movement of the same name resulted in a revolutionary new art experience. The works by Wassily Kandinsky that are owned by the Beyeler Collection will serve as a starting-point to give members of the public an insight into the work of a group of avant-garde artists whose openness and internationalism were interrupted by the First World War. Der Blaue Reiter is also the name of the legendary Almanac published by Wassily Kandinsky (1866- 1944) and Franz Marc (1880–1916), which appeared in Munich in 1912. In that book, Kandinsky and Marc brought together texts and pictures from different cultures and by different artists. The Almanac was intended to document the need for a new beginning in the visual arts at the beginning of the 20th century. It testifies to a revolutionary new understanding of art and the world that centered on the visual representation of ideas rather than the reproduction of visible reality. This can be seen above all in the liberation of color, which was inspired by the pre-Alpine landscape to the south of Munich. The ideas that caused Kandinsky and Franz Marc, in the first instance, to move towards abstraction culminated in a turning-point in western views on art that has left its mark on generations of painters right up until today. The exhibition, which will feature around 70 artworks and 90 exhibits in all, will present the Almanac and, primarily through major groups of works by Kandinsky and Marc, illustrate the revolution in painting that occurred between 1908 and 1914. The motif of a blue rider, which Kandinsky described as having come up by chance during a conversation with Marc, can be seen as programmatic: blue as a cosmic color combined with the animal’s innate naturalness and the rider’s dynamism as he jumps from one element to another. In a specially designed multimedia information room, a “Geography of Der Blaue Reiter” will demonstrate the internationalism of the participating artists in an avant-garde Europe with no borders, which was brutally ended by the First World War. The exhibition at the Fondation Beyeler will start in the year 1908, when Kandinsky and Gabriele Münter–who were not married–moved into an apartment in Munich and began frequenting Marianne von Werefkin and Alexei Jawlensky, likewise an unmarried couple, in Murnau in Upper Bavaria. The following year, Münter bought a house in Murnau that still exists today, where she and Kandinsky spent most of their time, especially the summers, until 1914. Münter and Kandinsky’s move to the country represented the fulfilment of the desire for a simple, unconventional life in harmony with nature and the agricultural world of Upper Bavaria. It can be seen as one aspect of the “life reform” movement that influenced large segments of society in the years before the First World War, resulting in many different outcomes: criticism of civilization was closely intertwined with the desire to transform society. Kandinsky and Münter’s preoccupation with folk art, especially the production of stained glass in Upper Bavaria, was linked with their notion of the equal status of all the arts, later to be documented in the Almanac, in which Western art is juxtaposed with children’s drawings and votive images as well as with African and Asian art. The collaboration between Münter, Werefkin, Jawlensky and Kandinsky and their depiction of the light- flooded landscapes and lakes of the region, which is dominated by the Alps, led to an innovative treatment of color that will provide the first focus of the exhibition. Luminous patches of unmixed pigments were placed next to one another, with their visible brushwork conveying dynamism. That process was described by Gabriele Münter as a move from “copying nature–in a more or less Impressionist style–to feeling the content of things–abstracting–conveying an extract”, with an important role being played by Alexej von Jawlensky and the emphatically “simple” color forms of his landscape paintings. Through his treatment of such patches of color, Kandinsky liberated line from contour and the patches themselves from figurativeness, as is demonstrated by, above all, his paintings from the key year of 1910, a wonderful selection of which can be seen in the exhibition. One of the most important aspirations of the artists connected with Der Blaue Reiter, and primarily Kandinsky, was to communicate the view that the visual arts are synaesthetic i.e. that they overlap with other art forms. The idea of synaesthesia is mirrored in day-to-day language: someone who speaks of a “composition” generally means a musical one, but the layout of a work of art is also described as a pictorial composition. There are color tones as well as musical ones. Viewers should remember this when looking at Kandinsky’s large-format abstract works such as his legendary Composition VII, 1913 from the Tretyakov State Gallery. Another particularly important element is the rhythm that results from the eye’s involvement with the painting. Rather than expressing the gesture of painting, Kandinsky’s works trigger a visual interaction between the viewer and the work that ideally creates a rhythm paralleled in music. As from 1910, Franz Marc and Maria Franck lived together in Sindelsdorf, fifteen kilometers away from Murnau. The encounter between Kandinsky and Marc in early 1911 provided the crucial impetus for the publication of Der Blauer Reiter Almanac, which the two artists published jointly. While both men shared the desire for cultural renewal, they adopted very different forms of artistic expression. This becomes especially clear when one sees the two paintings they exchanged as tokens of their friendship, which the exhibition will present together for the first time ever. With its self-contained world of many diverse colored forms and its characteristic blue horses, Marc’s painting The Dream from the Thyssen- Bornemisza Museum, his gift to Kandinsky, reflects the artist’s interest in nature and its soul. Kandinsky’s gift to Marc, Improvisation 12, with its telling subtitle The Rider (Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlung, Munich) is a manifestation of his desire to give visual form to the dynamism of ideas by using brilliant colors and dissolving figurative representation. What mattered for Marc was not to represent an animal as such but rather to portray its essence as an expression of archaic, authentic nature. The celebration of animals’ souls in his paintings must be seen against the backdrop of the nascent animal protection movement before the First World War; it seems to represent the opposite of technical progress and thereby to correspond to the tendency to criticize progress that was always present, particularly in German society. The exhibition contains a selection of Marc’s most important animal paintings, with the rarely exhibited canvas The Large Blue Horses (Walker Art Center, Minneapolis)being one of the highlights. Even more than Marc, who perished on the battlefield at Verdun just over one hundred years ago on March 4, 1916, August Macke, who died at the beginning of the First World War, leaves one with a feeling of incompleteness when one looks at his œuvre.