Guggenheim New York Presents Gabriele Münter: Contours of a World

• Debut presentation of Münter’s photographs in a U.S. museum 

• Reframing a Blaue Reiter innovator through a new lens 

 The Guggenheim New York will present the first monographic exhibition in the United States on the German artist Gabriele Münter (b. 1877, Berlin; d. 1962, Murnau am Stafflesee, Germany) in nearly thirty years. Münter was a critical figure in the advancement of modernism in early twentieth-century Europe. Gabriele Münter: Contours of a World will focus on her heightened Expressionist production from around 1908 to 1920, while also highlighting her later developments. The presentation will comprise some sixty paintings and nineteen of her early photographs across three galleries. Taken during Münter’s travels around the southern and midwestern U.S. at the turn of the twentieth century, these photographs will be exhibited in this country for the first time.  

Gabriele Münter: Contours of a World will illuminate Münter’s disruptive and underrecognized practice while challenging historical narratives that have sidelined women artists. For decades, Münter has been relegated to a minor figure in the history of German Expressionism and the Blaue Reiter (Blue Rider, 1911–14) movement, overshadowed by her then-companion and creative partner, Vasily Kandinsky. This exhibition corrects that framing, establishing Münter as a prolific and innovative artist who created significant work across mediums and movements throughout her long career. The show’s counter-canonical approach builds on the Guggenheim’s legacy of upending traditional art-historical frameworks and upholding radical art in all its forms.  

“Münter’s unwavering curiosity about the world around her shaped both her life and art. She wielded color and line in remarkable ways, and this spirit of exploration led her to become a uniquely international artist,” says Megan Fontanella, Curator, Modern Art and Provenance, Guggenheim New York. “A formative trip to the United States around the turn of the twentieth century sparked her creative vision, as she pursued art through the medium of photography. To now organize her debut exhibition at a New York museum, 125 years later, is both extraordinary and long overdue.”  

Münter was a distinctly modern artist who was not only deeply invested in the aesthetics and visual culture of her native Germany but also engaged with the innovations of a transnational avant-garde. The artist was a key figure of Der Blaue Reiter, the network of progressive artists, writers, and musicians who probed in diverse ways the expressive potential of color and the symbolic—and often spiritual—resonance of forms. She later spent the years of World War I in Scandinavia, prompting a rich exchange with Nordic modernisms that brought shifts in her artistic practice and allegiances. With her bold planes of vibrant colors, Münter reimagined the traditional genres of still life, landscape, and portraiture, forging a compelling alternative to concurrent innovations in radical abstraction. The artist later explained, “When I begin to paint, it’s like leaping suddenly into deep waters, and I never know beforehand whether I will be able to swim.”  

This landmark exhibition will also spotlight early photographs taken during Münter’s 1898–1900 travels in the United States, marking her first foray into the medium. Using a No. 2 Bulls-Eye Kodak—a popular box camera at the time—she captured family members, neighbors, and townsfolk. These photographs, which never saw the public eye during her lifetime, reveal a rich period of experimentation with light, shadow, and perspective. Pushing her practice beyond the expectations of snapshot photography, Münter generated portraits that are often composed and evocative of contemporary studio portraiture of the time. Together, they offer insight into a formative moment in the artist’s career—a time that laid the foundation for her artistic vision and the work that followed.  

Despite Münter’s significance, only a handful of dedicated English-language monographs have been published on her work. The accompanying Guggenheim exhibition catalogue introduces new scholarship that illuminates her pioneering and underexamined practice. An introductory essay situates Münter within the artistic circles that fostered her development and explores the social and political forces that, at times, hindered it. A persuasive case is made for viewing her earliest photographs as foundational to her subsequent artistic practice, while other texts trace the transformations of the artist’s practice during her World War I exile in Scandinavia—her most successful period in terms of exhibition making—and examine the crosscurrents that informed her work. Finally, close examinations of lesser-known paintings in the artist’s oeuvre demonstrate the breadth of her subjects and the complex dynamics embodied in her gaze. 

Gabriele Münter: Contours of a World is organized by Megan Fontanella, Curator, Modern Art and Provenance, Guggenheim New York. The photography selection is cocurated with Victoria Horrocks, Curatorial Fellow, Photography, Guggenheim New York.  

Support 

The Guggenheim is grateful for the support of the Gabriele Münter and Johannes Eichner Foundation, Munich, and the Städtische Galerie am Lenbachhaus und Kunstbau München. 

The Leadership Committee for Gabriele Münter: Contours of a World is gratefully acknowledged for its generosity, with special thanks to the Huo Family Foundation, Claire Foerster and Daniel Bernstein, and Angela Lustig and Dale Taylor. 

Additional support is provided by Art Mentor Foundation Lucerne. 

 About the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation 

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation was established in 1937 and is dedicated to promoting the understanding and appreciation of modern and contemporary art through exhibitions, education programs, research initiatives, and publications. The international constellation of museums includes the Guggenheim New York; the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice; the Guggenheim Bilbao; and the future Guggenheim Abu Dhabi. A “temple of spirit” where radical art and architecture meet, the Guggenheim New York is among a group of eight Frank Lloyd Wright structures in the United States designated as a UNESCO World Heritage site. To learn more about the Guggenheim New York and the Guggenheim’s activities around the world, visit guggenheim.org.