Adolf Erbslöh

Modern art in Munich split apart in a committee meeting, and Adolf Erbslöh was on the winning side of the vote. In 1909 he had helped found the Neue Künstlervereinigung München, the New Artists' Association, a group of restless painters that included Wassily Kandinsky and Alexej Jawlensky. Erbslöh drafted the plan and served as its secretary.

Two years later the association was tearing itself apart over how far into abstraction it should go. In early 1911 Erbslöh took over as chairman in place of Kandinsky, and Kandinsky walked out, taking the painters Franz Marc and Gabriele Münter with him to found the rival Blaue Reiter, the Blue Rider, which would become the more famous name by far. Erbslöh, born in Barmen in 1881, was himself a strong colourist, painting nudes, landscapes and still lifes in the saturated, simplified Expressionism of the moment.

He kept painting through both world wars and died at Irschenhausen, in the Bavarian countryside he often worked in, in 1947.