Gabriele Münter, Self-Portrait in Front of an Easel, 1908-09. Oil on canvas, 30 11/16 × 23 13/16 inches. Princeton University Art Museum, Gift of Frank E. Taplin Jr., Class of 1937, and Mrs. Taplin

By now, we all know the too-common story of women artists overshadowed by their male partners: Leonora Carrington and Dorothea Tanning by Max Ernst, Jo Hopper by Edward Hopper, Sophie Taeuber-Arp by Jean Arp, Dora Maar and Françoise Gilot by Picasso, Camille Claudel by Rodin—the list goes on. Added to this lineage is Gabriele Münter (1877-1962), long framed in relation to Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944). She has now, finally, been given her due in an exhibition at the Guggenheim, “Gabriele Münter: Contours of a World.”

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Münter was one of the founders of the Blue Rider Group (Der Blaue Reiter), active from 1911-1914, alongside Kandinsky, Franz Marc, Marianne von Werefkin and August Macke. The group sought to use color as an expression of inner feeling rather than a descriptive tool for objects. Encouraged by Münter, Kandinsky pushed fully into abstraction, while Münter continued to explore expression through color and contour in landscapes, portraits and still lifes. Kandinsky, ever the theorist, wrote, “Colour is a power which directly influences the soul. Colour is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammers, the soul is the hammer with many........

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