Murnau – The Garden II

In August 1909 the painter Gabriele Münter, Kandinsky's companion, bought a house on the edge of Murnau, a market town in the foothills of the Bavarian Alps. Locals called it the Russenhaus, the Russian's house. The couple furnished it together, painted their own furniture and laid out a garden, which Kandinsky planned and planted with real enthusiasm. This is that garden a year later, in oil on cardboard. The foundation that looks after the house today credits this landscape with pushing Kandinsky's painting toward abstraction. By October 1911 the same rooms were hosting Franz Marc and August Macke as they prepared the almanac they called The Blue Rider. The back of this picture is inscribed "Garten 1912", although the catalogue of Kandinsky's paintings dates it to 1910. It belongs to the collection of Gabriele and Werner Merzbacher and has been on permanent loan to the Kunsthaus Zürich since 2021.