The Lenbach House in Munich: The Blue Rider Group at Its Best

If you like the Blue Riders, a group of German Expressionist artists, you will have a wonderful time at the Lenbach House in Munich. The Florentine-style home was originally built as the residence and studio of Franz von Lenbach, a Munich painter at the end of the nineteenth century. Today it is one of Munich's premier art institutions. Within its walls there is an impressive collection of contemporary and classical art, but for modern art lovers the highlight of a museum visit would be the five rooms devoted to the paintings of the Der Blau Reiter (Blue Rider Group). Wassily Kandinsky is especially well represented here, but you will find some colorful paintings by Gabrielle Munter, Paul Klee, Franz Marc, August Macke, Lyonel Feininger, Alexej von Jawlensky, Marianne von Werefkin and Albert Bloch. It is a fine contemporary collection of a small, but influential group of German visual artists that worked together for a few short years before the outbreak of World War I.

The First World War hit this group like a bad nightmare. Franz Marc and August Macke were killed in combat, and Wassily Kandinsky, Alex von Jawlensky and Marianne von Werefkin had to return to their native Russia. Paul Klee got off the lightest with a stint with the German army, where he painted camouflage designs for the military. No war lasts forever and after the costly conflict, Kandinsky and Jawlensky were back in Germany, where they regrouped with Klee and Feinenger to form the group of the Blue Four( Der Blaue Vier). This time they prevailed and today no museum of modern art is complete without a few examples from these productive artists. By far the best collection of these colorful painters is here in the city of Munich, where they once flourished. A walk through the five rooms is to experience the essence of color-space composition in the first person.