Murnau Landscape (Murnauer Landschaft)

1909

Oil on cardboard, 50.5 × 54.5 cm. Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus und Kunstbau München, Munich

A road, trees and hills near Murnau, broken into angular planes of invented color. For a time around 1908–09, the museum says, he went further than any of his painting companions.

Signed and dated '09 at lower right, near small color tests left in view.
Look at the shadows on the road: they get the same flat treatment as the trees that cast them.
Scholars have shown a debt to French Cubism, above all to Henri Le Fauconnier, a guest at the second NKVM show.
Colors are chosen apart from nature: violet meets yellow, green meets orange, a single tree glows vermilion, and a band of hills turns turquoise.
Münter owned it until her 1957 gift.

Neue Künstlervereinigung München (NKVM): The New Artists' Association of Munich, an exhibiting group founded in 1909.

Image: Lenbachhaus, Munich · CC0 1.0