The Cosmos of “Der Blaue Reiter” – From Kandinsky to Campendonk

This show retraces the roots of the expressionist artists who made up the Blue Rider group, looking at the influences and connections that shaped them

Wassily Kandinsky, Two Riders Against a Red Background, 1911. Colour woodcut (print). © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett / Dietmar Katz.

Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin
1 March 2025 – 15 June 2025

by SABINE SCHERECK

This is the first time the Kupferstichkabinett in Berlin has gone into its vaults to unearth works by the expressionist artists of the group known as Der Blaue Reiter (the Blue Rider), including Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc, August Macke and Gabriele Münter. Although strong, vibrant colours that left realism behind were the group’s trademark, in 1912 it mounted an exhibition in Munich called The Blue Rider – Black-White, focusing on its drawings and graphics works. The Kupferstichkabinett’s current exhibition, finely curated by Andreas Schalhorn, sits well between last year’s big retrospective at the Tate Modern and the current exhibition at the Museum Barberini in Potsdam, Kandinsky’s Universe: Geometric Abstraction in the 20th Century, which picks up the thread of Kandinsky’s work after his time with the Blue Rider.

The exhibition at the Kupferstichkabinett includes about 100 works by nearly 30 artists. It begins with Kandinsky, one of the Blue Riders’ founding members, and his artistic heritage shaped by Russian fairytales and sagas. Horses feature prominently in his early work. However, while the colour woodcut The Farewell (Large Version) (1903) is still informed by the art nouveau style and depicts a black horse, the later woodcut Two Riders Against a Red Background (1911) departs from realism with bold shapes and a yellow-and-white horse. The black and white Etching II (1913-14) illustrates his progression to abstract forms. The series is complemented by two interesting works: a coloured lithograph by W Wasiliew showing The Glorious, Strong and Courageous Knight Yeruslan Lazarevich on the Three-Headed Monster Gorynych (1898), in which rough blobs of pink, purple, green and yellow give some colour to the otherwise detailed black-and-white image. The application of colour is primitive and the result far from realistic, yet it shows that not all imagery that surrounded Kandinsky was in the realistic tradition. The second work is by Bernd Koberling, Untitled (from Untitled – 17 Watercolours) (1996). It dazzles with a colourful abstract image of flowing shapes influenced by Kandinsky’s later style. Besides reflecting Kandinsky’s artistic development, another dimension is added: the significance of the rider for Kandinsky. For him, the rider was a brave character, a pioneer and symbolised the avant garde.

Franz Marc, Resting Horses, 1912. Colour woodcut (print). © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett / Dietmar Katz.

Following Kandinsky, fellow founding member Franz Marc is introduced. Disappointed by the teachings of the conservative Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, Marc became a freelance artist in 1903. In 1910, the gallery Thannhauser showed French and Russian avant garde art, including the works of the Neue Künstler-Vereinigung München (NKVM, New Artists’ Association of Munich), a group that came into being following the secession movement of the 1890s that strove to move away from the conservative artistic style promoted at established art schools. Kandinsky was part of that 1910 exhibition and Marc was impressed by his work. Later that year, Marc got to know Kandinsky at a gathering organised by fellow NKVM members Alexej von Jawlensky and Marianne von Werefkin. Marc sought a new kind of imagery to express spirituality, one that was remote from the surroundings that his generation regarded as corrupt and tainted by industrialisation. Hence, he focused on animals as they meant purity and lived in harmony with nature. Later, his particular use of colour added another layer: blue stood for the masculine, the spiritual and the intellectual, while yellow represented femininity and warmth. The selection of his works on display include: Two Cats (1909-10), which shows two entwined cats and was used as the exhibition poster for his show at Brakls Moderne Kunsthandlung Munich; the woodcut Drinking Horse (1912); the colour woodcut Resting Horses (1912); and the woodcut Tiger (1912). These show his style developing towards sleek lines that become more geometrical. Kandinsky’s idea of the horse as a symbol of the avant garde combined with Macke’s view of animals as being pure and blue, as the colour of the masculine spirit, led to the group being named The Blue Rider.

Franz Marc, Tiger, 1912. Woodcut. © Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin / Dietmar Katz.

The third man in the group presented here is Macke. While Kandinsky was the oldest in the founding group and Marc admired the artist who was 14 years his senior, his friendship with Macke, who was seven years his junior, was on more of an equal footing. Macke’s work, however, was less guided by abstract ideas of art than the simple pleasures of colour and beautiful surroundings such as gardens, as in the watercolours Landscape with Light Tree and Market in Tunis II (both 1914). Macke’s style nods towards cubism without loosing the figurative bases. His work is complemented by Jutta Damme’s watercolour Bazaar in Samarkand (1963), a town in Usbekistan, which with its luminous colours and reduced shapes shows Macke’s legacy. It also illustrates the idea of the “cosmos” of the Blue Rider, to which the title of the exhibition refers.

August Macke, Landscape with Light Tree, 1914. Watercolour over pencil. © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett / Volker-H. Schneider.

One section gives a glimpse of the historic 1912 Black-White exhibition, which was curated by Kandinsky and Macke and brought together 315 works by 34 international artists. Among them were Georges Braque, Robert Delaunay, Natalia Goncharova, Kazimir Malevich, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Emil Nolde, Pablo Picasso and Maurice de Vlaminck. Included here are Kirchner’s Russian Dancers with Turbans (1910), André Derain’s Landscape (Le Morin) (1911) and, although created later, Delaunay’s lithograph The Eiffel Tower (1925). They represent the wide range of styles that were showcased at that exhibition, including Kirchner’s fluid lines, Delaunay’s futuristic angled shapes and Derain’s rather naturalistic approach to capturing trees, a pond, a small wooden bridge and a church nestled into the landscape.

Robert Delaunay, Eiffel Tower, 1925. Lithograph. © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett / Dietmar Katz.

Equally relevant is the focus on the female members of the group, the partners of the men, but all artists in their own right: Gabriele Münter, Kandinsky’s lover; Maria Franck-Marc; Elisabeth Macke; and Marianne von Werefkin, von Jawlensky’s lover). Münter’s Poster for the Gabriele Münter Exhibition in Copenhagen (1918) showing a slim woman in a long green dress, sitting listening to a violin player in front of her, is particularly striking as it predates the aesthetic found on many book covers and illustrations in East Germany. But the exhibition goes beyond these four women by casting the net wider and including Jacoba van Heemskerck and Goncharova.

Natalja Goncharova, White Peacock, 1911. Lithograph. Photo: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett / Dietmar Katz. © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2025.

Goncharova was a Russian artist, who was part of Kandinsky’s circle and became a member of the Blue Rider. Her work was shown at the Salon d’Automne in Paris in 1906 and in 1912 it was displayed at The Blue Rider exhibition in Munich. It also travelled to Berlin in 1913, where Herwarth Walden had just opened his gallery Der Sturm. Work from the Blue Rider group featured prominently in that exhibition, Erster Deutscher Herbstsalon (First German Autumn Salon). It was an important step for the Munich-based group and much supported by Marc, who knew that, despite the group’s desire for a peaceful existence in the mountains, a presence in Berlin was important if they were to be connected to the art market. Goncharova’s works on show here are reminiscent of Kirchner and hence do not stand out, although the lithograph White Peacock (1911) rewards a closer look because of its unusual motif. As the only woman in The Blaue Reiter Almanac apart from Münter, her relevance within the group is clear. The Almanac, edited by Kandinsky and Marc, was the original endeavour for the artists of The Blue Rider to join forces. Their aim was to create a record of the latest artistic movements in France, Germany and Russia. Goncharova left Russia and moved to Paris in 1914, where she died in 1962. Only recently has she been given more attention, though not in Berlin, so, for me, she was a new encounter.

Jacoba van Heemskerck, The Composition (Still Life), 1916. Woodcut. © Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin / Dietmar Katz.

The Dutch painter Van Heemskerck has had more exposure. Her Woodland I (1913) caught the eye in the exhibition Clouds and Light: Impressionism in Holland at the Museum Barberini in 2023, which also traced the aftermath of impressionism. The context here is that Heemskerck’s work was shown alongside the work from The Blue Rider in Walden’s gallery in 1913. On display here are two of her woodcuts, The Composition (Still Life) and Composition (Boats in a Harbour), both from 1916. They are intriguing. In the former, a slightly abstract still life, the outlines of fruit in a bowl are clearly visible but are surrounded by geometrical shapes.

Alexej von Jawlensky, Female Head III (after a wash drawing from around 1912), c1920. Lithograph. © Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin / Dietmar Katz.

The final person to feature in this Kupferstichkabinett show is Von Jawlensky, who joined the Blue Rider a bit later. His lithograph Female Head III (1912) shows a simple face with large black eyes and bold lines but it captivates because of its modern style. It could easily be a piece from the 1960s, when women’s makeup was marked by heavily applied mascara.

The impact The Blue Rider had on the arts is remarkable considering its very brief existence between 1911 and 1914, when the outbreak of the first world war forced some members, including Kandinsky, to leave the country. Yet there was a follow-up formation called Die Blaue Vier (The Blue Four), which came together in Weimar in 1924 and included Kandinsky and Von Jawlensky, who were then teaching at the Bauhaus. They were joined by fellow Bauhaus teachers Lyonel Feininger and Paul Klee. The group’s creation was down to the initiative of the New York-based art dealer Emmy Galka Scheyer, who got them to exhibit together in order to introduce them to an American audience. Between 1925 and 1944, seven exhibitions were staged. 

As was the case with the Kupferstichkabinett’s earlier show A Different Impressionism: International Printmaking from Manet to Whistler, this exhibition also opens up an interesting and different perspective on the Blue Rider.