Wassily Kandinsky - Murnau, casas en el Obermarkt, 1908 (Häuser am Obermarkt)

Offset Lithograph Murnau, Casas en el Obermarkt, 1908 (Häuser am Obermarkt) / Wassily Kandinsky Copyright @ Wassily Kandinsky, VEGAP, Madrid, 2015 Published by Thyssen-Bornemisza Museo Nacional . Even today, one can still see the very spot from which Kandinsky painted this view of Murnau’s main street in 1908. Little has changed since then in this small Bavarian village at the foot of the Alps, whose beauty attracted Kandinsky, Gabriele Münter, Alexej von Jawlensky and Marianne von Werefkin during the summers leading up to the First World War. Although Kandinsky did not date *Murnau, Houses on the Obermarkt*, there is little doubt as to its date, given the Russian painter’s rapid evolution towards abstraction during those years. The work reveals echoes of the Fauvist style that Kandinsky had encountered in Paris in 1906 and 1907. However, the brushwork is more compact and the colour palette somewhat darker. Furthermore, colour is already clearly striving to break free from the model. For Kandinsky, the years between 1904 and 1908 were years of travel, most of which he undertook in the company of the young German artist Gabriele Münter, whom he had met in Munich in 1902. During 1904 and 1905 they visited the Netherlands, Italy and North Africa. The couple were in Paris from 1906–1907, and spent six months in Berlin during the winter of 1907–1908, finally returning to Munich in the winter of 1908. From then on, they spent some periods in the Bavarian capital and others in the village of Murnau, some eighty kilometres south of Munich, which they visited for the first time together during a short trip they took in mid-June 1908. They both loved the place and, at Kandinsky’s urging, Münter bought a house there in August 1909. From that time onwards, and until the outbreak of war in 1914, she and Kandinsky—often in the company of other artists, including Kandinsky’s compatriots Alexei Jawlensky and Marianne von Werefkin—spent much of the year in Murnau, particularly the summers. In the village and its surroundings (Murnau is picturesquely situated at the foot of the Bavarian Alps), Kandinsky found a wealth of subjects from which he drew constant inspiration during those crucial years, which also witnessed his increasingly radical shift towards an abstract conception of painting. Although *Houses on the Obermarkt* is undated, the artist’s stylistic evolution during those years was so rapid and decisive that it is almost certainly a work from 1908, produced at a time when the influence of the Fauve painting he had seen in Paris was still evident. The fact that the painting – which lay unnoticed for many years on the top floor of the painter’s home in Neuilly-sur-Seine, before being rediscovered by the artist’s widow – was wrapped in a 1908 issue of the Munich newspaper *Münchner Neueste Nachrichten* provides further evidence for this dating. However, the title is not the original one, and the work does not appear in the artist’s handwritten lists, in which he recorded his major paintings. Houses on the Obermarkt is simply the title that appears in the catalogue raisonné compiled by Roethel and Benjamin, and by which it has subsequently been known. The painting depicts Murnau’s main street, seen from a shaded side street next to the Griesbräu Inn. The village has changed so little that, even today, one can pinpoint exactly where the artist must have set up his easel. Judging by the dimensions of the canvas and the freedom with which the medium has been handled, it is possible that the composition was painted outdoors, perhaps in a single sitting. A great collector's item. The poster measures 66 x 98 cm. All posters have been selected by art lovers for art lovers. The poster will be shipped in a rigid cardboard tube. This item is shipped certified with a tracking number and carefully protected.

Estimate:£125.57

View all items fromCatawikiorArts & Graphics