Between Kochel and Kalmunz. Early plein airs by Gabriele Munter at the school "Phalanx" by Vasily Kandinsky.

Matyunina Dar'ya Stanislavovna PhD in Art History Associate Professor; Department of Fine, Decorative Arts and Design; Institute of Culture and Arts of Moscow City Pedagogical University 125363, Russia, g. Moscow, ul. Fabritsiusa, 21, of. 101 matdarya@ya.ru Other publications by this author     Semyonova Mariya Aleksandrovna Doctor of Pedagogy Professor; Department of Fine, Decorative Arts and Design; Institute of Culture and Arts of Moscow City Pedagogical University 125363, Russia, Moscow, Fabricius str., 21, office 115 semenovamal@mgpu.ru

Habibova Alevtina Sakmarovna PhD in Pedagogy Associate Professor; Department of Fine, Decorative Arts and Design; Institute of Culture and Arts of Moscow City Pedagogical University 125363, Russia, Moscow, Fabricius str., 21, office 205 khabibovaas@mgpu.ru

    Gabriele Munter is a German expressionist artist, often referred to by European art historians as the "pioneer of the avant–garde", a student and friend of Vasily Kandinsky for fourteen years, co-founder and active participant of the Blue Horseman association, the owner of the famous Russenhaus ("Russian House") in Murnau near Munich (now the memorial museum) where manifestos were formulated and the ideas of German Expressionism and the avant-garde found their creative embodiment. The stage of creativity of Gabriele Munter and Vasily Kandinsky, associated with the "Blue Horseman", is quite fully explored in foreign art history literature and partly in domestic literature. To a much lesser extent, the years of Munter's formation as a painter and graphic artist preceding the Blue Horseman have been studied and described, coinciding with several early years of Kandinsky's work, spent in Munich as a teacher of his own small art school "Phalanx", and the works created by Kandinsky and Munter during the first two summers of joint plein airs in Bavaria. The description and analysis of these works seems to the authors of this study to be an urgent and important task for understanding the genesis of modernism and determines its scientific novelty. Choosing the pre-Expressionist period of Gabriele Munter's (and Wassily Kandinsky's) work as an object of study, the researchers narrow down its subject to the first two years of the artists' collaboration during their trip to Bavaria, while focusing exclusively on works created on the planer, or based on joint plein-airs in Kochel and Kalmunz. Thus, the purpose of the study is to use the methods of historical and biographical, formal and comparative art criticism analysis to describe a number of works by Munter and Kandinsky created en plein air in Kochel and Kalmunz in 1902-1903. Since Munter's work has been studied to a much lesser extent in Russian-language art criticism than Kandinsky's, the authors of the article, in an effort to fill in the missing fragments in the artist's creative biography and include them among those worthy of art criticism, focus more on her works. Kandinsky's well-known sketches, created by him during these years at the same time as Munter, written often from the same point of view, at the same time of day and under the same lighting, are used in this study as a canvas and modeling leitmotif. Exploring this period of Munter's work, it is impossible to do without Kandinsky as forming her manner and creative credo of a fellow artist, teacher and partner. An additional task of this study is the intention of the authors to trace and characterize the mutual influences and synchronously emerging trends in the work of both masters.

    For the first time, the plein-air works of both artists from the early joint years of creativity attracted the attention of researchers and were shown at a large exhibition "Under the open sky. On travels with Vasily Kandinsky and Gabriele Munter" ("Unter freiem Himmel. Unterwegs mit Wassily Kandinsky und Gabriele M?nter") at the Lenbachhaus City Art Gallery in Munich. The exhibition was held from October 30, 2020 to January 30, 2022 and collected extensive material: picturesque sketches by Munter and Kandinsky, graphics (drawings and engravings), notes, photographs. The curators of the exhibition set out to trace the artistic connection and mutual influences in the work of Kandinsky and Munter during their joint travels "light" in Bavaria, and then in Rotterdam, Tunis, Rapallo and Paris. Numerous oil sketches, photographs and sketchbooks by Gabriele Munter made during this period were presented to the audience at the exhibition in the Lenbachhaus for the first time. The organizers of the exhibition stressed in the accompanying text that the materials and works they collected for the exhibition "give an idea of how often the same motifs and artistic techniques were shared by a couple, and at the same time demonstrate a very personal, individual perception of the world by each of them" ^[23]. An album was published following the exhibition ^[13]. Gabriele Munter's solo exhibitions, including large retrospectives, were quite a frequent phenomenon of German artistic life from the late 1970s to the 2000s, as evidenced by the many catalogues published [see 5, 8-12, 17]. Biographies of Munter and Kandinsky were also published in German and English in the second half of the twentieth century, including chapters on the period of their joint work, and monographs exploring both the early and mature work of Munter ^{[6, 7, 14, 15, 16, 18, 19]}. In addition, extensive illustrative and research material related to the artistic activities of Munter and Kandinsky in the early 1900s is contained on the website of the Lenbachhaus city Gallery in sections dedicated to the artists of the Blue Horseman and the open-air exhibition 2020-2022, the website of the Gabriele Munter and Johannes Eichner Foundation, as well as on the Internetthe page of the Kalmyunz art Colony ^[20-23].

    Russian art historians began to explore the work and biography of Gabriele Munter relatively recently. In 2013, the catalog "Lenbachhaus Gallery" by M.M. Silina was published, containing the chapter "Gabriel Munter and Alexey Yavlensky" ^[3], which describes several works by the artist in 1908-1909 (the period of the "Blue Horseman"). Then in 2017, a monograph by M.M. Silina was published dedicated to the work of Munter, reviewing her work of the early period ^[4] - the monograph contains a reproduction and a brief description of Munter's sketch "Kandinsky painting a landscape" in 1903, created during the plein air in Kalmunz.  In 2022, in the January issue of the Tretyakov Gallery magazine, K.-I. Dost published a voluminous article "Gabriele Munter and the artistic avant-garde of the twentieth Century Art", telling about Munter's role in the Blue Horseman association and about the years of her formation as an artist, including the unconditional influence of Vasily Kandinsky ^[2]. The article by M. A. Baranova "The Story of one Love: Vasily Kandinsky and Gabriele Munter" published on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the "Blue Horseman" in the magazine about Russian culture abroad "Other Shores" has a biographical character ^[1]. Thus, none of the Russian–language publications about Munter and Kandinsky contain an analysis of the works of the artist or both artists of 1902-1903 - the very first years of their joint plein airs, on which the authors of this article decided to focus attention.

    The beginning of Gabriele Munter's development as an artist should probably be considered the end of the 1890s, when she came to Dusseldorf and for the first time began studying academic drawing with Ernst Bosch, then at the Damenschule ("Women's Academy") Willie Spatz.

    Gabriele's father, Carl Friedrich Munter, a dentist, went to America in 1848 and married Wilhelmina Scheuber there, returned with his wife in 1864 to Germany. Three children were born in the family: Karl Theodor, Emmy, and in 1877 in Berlin – Gabriele. The children received a versatile and progressive upbringing. The impetus for Gabriele Munter's development as an artist was, apparently, a trip with her sister Emmy to relatives in the United States, where she studied photography from 1898 to 1900 and made many sketches and sketches. After returning to Germany, she settled in Munich, the "capital of the arts", the city of the famous Secession, filled with an atmosphere of creativity and freedom. In Munich, in the summer of 1901, Gabriela entered the "beginner class" of Maximilian Dasio of the school of the Association of Women Artists (Kuenstlerinnen-Vereins), where, unlike Dusseldorf, she no longer painted casts, but a head from a "living model" and landscapes. Later, during the winter semester, she attends classes with Angelo Yank and soon begins painting in a nude class. From a classmate, she learns about the recently opened Falanga painting school here in Munich. In the winter of 1901-1902, she took a Wilhelm H?sgen sculpture course at the Phalanx, which included evening nude drawing lessons in Vasily Kandinsky's painting class.

    Kandinsky, a former student of the law faculty of Moscow University, finally decided to study painting at the end of 1896, moved with his wife Anna to Munich, attracted, like many artists of his generation, by the artistic glory of the capital of Bavaria.  "While Paris was the most progressive art center, Munich offered a wide variety of educational systems and techniques. "They could draw there," Leonid Pasternak recalled, based on his experience as a student and teacher at the Munich Art Academy, thereby explaining the preference given by many of his fellow painters to the Bavarian capital," writes G. Munter biographer Gisela Kleine ^{[18, p. 129]}. Munich impressionist painter Lovis Corinth also confirms Munich's artistic fame: "Munich didn't just have the most artists, it had the best.  After Paris [Munich – author's note.] the academy was the most famous in the world" [ibid.].

    Having studied at the most popular Munich art schools of Anton Ashbe and Shimon Hollosy, Kandinsky opens his own "Phalanx". Here Gabriele Munter studies with Emmy Dessler, Maria Gisler, Olga Meerson, Richard Kote and later joined Hedwig Frener and Carl Palme. At the same time, she is taking a woodcut course with graphic artist and poster artist Ernst Neumann, a participant in the Munich political literary and artistic cabaret "Eleven Executioners" ("Elf Scharfrichter"), one of the founding members of the Phalanx. Studying with Neumann and gaining experience in creating woodcuts, of course, largely determined Munter's further manner and creative search.

    In Kandinsky's painting class, Munter, apparently, stood out for her courage, freedom of manner and hard work, which struck the teacher: "Kandinsky was captivated by the directness of her judgments, her ability to listen understandingly, seriousness in her work, which could unexpectedly turn into mischief" ^{[18, p. 149]}. Soon, in addition to creativity, Kandinsky and Munter joined romantic feelings: from the very beginning of Gabriele's studies at the Phalanx, during the school's summer trip to the first plein air in Kochel am See, they explained themselves, confessing to each other their mutual infatuation. Their romance began, which lasted until 1917.

   Studying painting with Kandinsky, in the winter of 1901-1902. Munter begins to paint with oil paints and almost immediately in the technique recommended by Kandinsky – palette knife. Kandinsky believed that the technique of applying oil paints with a spatula (palette knife), the so-called "spatula technique", liberates the painter, and urged his students to apply paint "widely and evenly with a spatula" ^{[18, p. 153]}. In this technique, in the next few years, both artists will create a number of works in a light etude impressionistic manner.

    Munter's first known plein-air work in the spatula technique is an oil sketch painted during a trip with the Phalanx to Kalmunz in 1903 (Fig. 01).

On the left: Fig. 01. G. Munter. Kalmyunts. 1903, M., K. 25 x 16 cm. Lenbachhaus, Munich. On the right: Fig. 02. G. Munter. At home in Kalmyunts. 1903. Color woodcut. 18.3 x 18.8 cm . Lenbachhaus, Munich

This is a small-sized urban landscape in a vertical format. It is painted pastichly, in small separate strokes in a "natural" palette of green and brown tones and impressionistically-freely: the contours of objects blur, dissolving in the light-and-air environment. Some time later, in the winter of 1903-1904, Munter prepared his first series of color woodcuts based on drawings made in Kalmunz. They are born due to her craving, which she often writes about later in letters and diaries, "to outline objects clearly and concisely" ^{[18, p. 152]}. This statement of the artist confirms the rather widespread opinion of researchers of her heritage that Munter, unlike Kandinsky (already at an early stage of his work as a "colorist"), tends to drawing and structured interpretation of forms rather than impressionistic picturesqueness and thinking in "color spots". Always following the teacher's recommendations regarding color relations and the composition of her sketches, Munter simultaneously leaves pencil sketches in her Kalmunz albums demonstrating her simplified perception of color: she outlines areas of different colors with contours and puts numbers in them indicating the colors. These sketches, like the early woodcuts, are a departure from the "atomization" of color, the search for semitones and subtle, intuitively perceived color relations of the impressionistic painting concept. Munter's color woodcut "Houses in Kalmunz" (Fig. 02) shows the same view of the corner of the street as in the oil sketch. Munter creates this woodcut months after his stay in Kalmunz, in the winter of 1903, in Munich and, obviously, uses a photograph of the motif for it, from which he makes an accurate contour outline. The woodcut is confidently disassembled tones. The clear lines outlining the houses, the contrast of their dark mass with the light pavement create a beautiful graphic effect.

    At the same time as Munter's obvious attraction to graphics and a clear concise "outline of objects", the 1903 oil sketch depicting the perspective of a small alley in Kalmunz is not written at all "rigidly". The characteristic old Franconian buildings and the crooked street going deep, the thick accent of the green gate on the facade of the house on the right, the light bluish-lilac sky – everything is written in the same pasty, mobile and as if uncertainly applied strokes, without differentiation of the density of matter and textures. The verticals of the walls of the houses gently "flow" into the undulating, humping horizontal of the uneven sidewalk, forming a single mobile rocky mass. The warm ochre and reddish-brown tone of the verticals (house facades) are noticeably darker than the light ochre, with the inclusion of greenish smears, of the horizontal surface of the pavement. The bleached bluish-lilac sky frames and shades the warm earthy color of houses and pavement with a cold tone. The effect of depth and perspective is created by horizontal red-brown stripes of shadows falling rhythmically on the pavement from houses that turn cold gray in the distance, and the dark arch of the arch of the house with a gray wall at the end of the alley, like a keystone collecting the composition.

From left to right: Fig. 03. V. Kandinsky. A street in Kalmyunts. Summer 1903; Fig. 04. Vasily Kandinsky in Kalmyunts. 1902 / Vasily Kandinsky in Rothenburg an der Tauber. 1903; Fig. 05. Photo by G. Munter. Kalmyunts. 1903

    Kandinsky writes the same motif in Kalmunz from almost the same point of view. His landscape "Kalmyuntz" (Fig. 02) is slightly larger. The point from which the Kandinsky sketch was written is closer to the depicted objects: the houses are larger, the perspective of the alley is shorter. The color scheme is somewhat different from Gabriele's: the sketch is dominated by cold lilac, gray tones, many shades of green and yellow-green instead of ochre, which we see in the Munter landscape. Kandinsky writes much more broadly, his strokes are larger, he applies them much more definitively "in shape": he paints the walls of houses with vertical strokes, horizontal roofs, "flowing", wrapping horizontal ochre-green brushstrokes with a spatula, uses only for pavement. There is not much sky in his sketch – a yellowish-gray edge at the top of the canvas. There are no shadows from houses on the sidewalk, as if the sun, whose presence could be guessed at in Munter's sketch, had gone behind the clouds. The curvature of the street, the dark arch at the end, the emerald gate on the facade of the house on the right – all this is depicted in Kandinsky's sketch, as well as in Munter's.

    Biographers of Munter and Kandinsky often cite a photo next to these two sketches of artists, the author of which is probably Munter. The photograph in most cases is called "Kandinsky in Kalmyunts" (Fig 04) and is dated in the summer of 1902 [see, for example, 18, p. 179. Published in 1994]. However, in the album "The Blue Horseman" ("Der Blaue Reiter"), published in 2009, the same photo was published under the title "Kandinsky in Rothenburg an der Tauber" ("Kandinsky in Rothenburg ob der Tauber") and dated November 1903 ^{[5, p. 197]}.  In the photo, Kandinsky stands in an alley very similar to Kalmyunts Lane: the perspective of the street and the corner from which he was shot, as well as the facade of the house with a gable roof in the background, resemble the composition of both picturesque sketches. The authors of this article are inclined to believe that Kalmyuntz is not in the photo, since Kandinsky is wearing a coat or a raincoat and a hat more suitable for the autumn November weather. But even if the photo was not taken in Kalmunz, it is of interest as one of the many photos in the extensive photo chronicle of the joint journey "under the open sky" of Munter and Kandinsky, which will continue further. There is another photo in the Munter archive, of the alley itself, which both write in summer in Kalmunz (Ill. 05) ^{[5, p. 195]}. For experimental painters discovering the possibilities of the open-air, painting landscapes and each other, traveling, keeping a "travel diary" in sketches, sketches and photographs, it was natural, and Munter and Kandinsky enthusiastically do this, leaving, in addition to the picturesque and graphic, an extensive photo archive.

    Munter and Kandinsky's travels and joint sketching experiences did not begin in Kalmunz, but a year earlier in Kochel. There, in this small town in the Alps, the students of the painting class of the Phalanx school first went to the plein air in 1902.  In Kochel, Kandinsky and Munter became close, cycling around the neighborhood together in search of picturesque motifs. In the photographic materials of 1901-1903 (authors – Munter and Kandinsky), a significant place is occupied by photos taken in the summer in Kochel. They show Kandinsky with his painting class, the students of the Phalanx in Kochel (Fig. 06), a photo of Gabriele Munter in the open air in Kochel (Fig. 07) and Vasily Kandinsky there on a bicycle (Fig. 08, 09). Later, the following summer in Kalmunz, another photo of Kandinsky with a bicycle was taken near the Rote Amsel hotel in Kalmunz (Fig. 010).

From left to right: Fig. 06. Photo by G. Munter. V. Kandinsky with his class at the Phalanx school in Kochel. 1902; Fig. 07. Gabriele Munter, writing in Kochel. July 1902

From left to right: Fig. 08. V. Kandinsky in Kochel, July 1902; Fig. 09. Photo of G. Munter. V. Kandinsky on a bicycle, summer 1902; Fig. 10. V. Kandinsky with a bicycle in front of the Rote Amsel Hotel in Kalmunz, summer 1903.

    During the stay of the Phalanx in Kochel, Kandinsky, who set himself the main task of working on the landscape, creates in parallel several impressionistically free sketches with female figures in a landscape of varying degrees of completeness: a portrait of Gabriele Munter sitting on a green hill against a background of blue rocks (Fig.11), a portrait of Gabriele Munter standing against the background of hills and rural buildings in a blouse with pink sleeves (Fig. 12), an unfinished sketch of a female figure in a landscape (Fig. 013). In the plein air, Kandinsky and Munter used a small-format primed cardboard, which could easily be taken with them and quickly covered with a colorful layer. Since they often drew each other during the sketches, it is especially interesting to assess the differences between these works in the construction of perspective, the choice of motive and technique.

From left to right: Fig. 11. V. Kandinsky. Gabriele Munter inKohele. 1902 M., K. 32 x 29.3 cm; Fig. 12. V. Kandinsky. Kohel. Gabriele Munter. 1902 M., K. 32.6 x 23.5 cm; Fig. 13. V. Kandinsky. A lady standing at the edge of the forest. 1902

    A year after the plein air in Kochel, in the summer in Kalmunz, Munter creates a landscape sketch with a male figure "Kandinsky painting a landscape" (Fig. 14).

From left to right: Fig. 14. G. Munter. Kandinsky, painting a landscape. 1903, Kalmyunts. M., K. 16.9 x 25 cm; Fig. 15. Photo by G. Munter. Kandinsky, painting a landscape at Burghugel Castle in the vicinity of Kalmyunz, summer 1903

This is how Kalmunz develops the continuation of the theme "man in the landscape", begun by Kandinsky in Kochel, and the characteristic free technique of "dissolving" the figure (and other objects) in the environment. "Kandinsky in the Landscape" is one of the most famous early works by Gabriela Munter, reproduced in most monographs and albums dedicated to her work and the work of the Blue Horseman artists and exhibited at many exhibitions. Researchers, analyzing her, ask again and again whether she solves here, like Kandinsky in his sketches described above, the purely impressionistic task of connecting the figure with the natural environment, air, environment, or whether this sketch is just a stage in mastering the technique of oil painting of a period when the artist simply did not technically determine how separate the shape from the landscape.

    In this study, Munter places the figure of Kandinsky strictly in the compositional center. Such a seemingly primitive layout looks a bit "clumsy" and, at first glance, shows the young artist's misunderstanding of the laws of composition. Gisela Kleine, a researcher of Munter's work, believes, however, that this arrangement, which deprives the sketch of dynamics and, in a certain sense, visual "intrigue", nevertheless, can be explained by Munter's purposeful desire to focus on a person around whose figure the surrounding landscape melts, becomes weightless: "Kandinsky sits right in the middle of a horizontally spreading hilly the landscape under a wide strip of bright sky; its somewhat tense position of the head, slightly bent back, sharp angles of the elbows and slight tension of the body down to the clearly marked tips of the feet, demonstrate - and one can even trace how it is highlighted in color - the graphically rigid structure underlying the picturesque sketch" ^{[18, p. 174]}.

    In the photo taken by Gabriele there, in Kalmunz, Vasily Kandinsky is sitting in exactly the same position on a high hill against the background of Burghugel Castle (Fig. 15): his neck, shoulders and head, the angle of bent elbows is the same as in Gabriele's picturesque sketch, only his legs, unlike the sketch In the photo, they are not stretched forward, but bent at the knees. Perhaps, the characteristic frame of the figure highlighted in color, noted by the researcher, is really present in Munter's painting work, and to some extent is a way to "separate" the sketchily, widely painted human figure from the equally widely "taken" background. At the same time, it is worth recognizing that, in the end, the impressionistic tasks of "dissolving into the environment" in this study by Munter come to the fore, and the figure is rather tightly fused and connected to the environment rather than separated from it. It should be noted that subsequently Munter, in a number of works in which a person or a group of people are placed in a landscape or interior, uses the same seemingly childishly simple, "clumsy" composition (for example, "Kandinsky and Erma Bossi at the table", 1910; "Kahnpartie", 1910 and etc.).

 Kandinsky, in turn, writes in Kalmunz Gabriel while working on sketches (Fig. 16, 17)

From left to right: Fig. 16. V. Kandinsky. Gabriele, writing in Kalmunz. A study. Summer 1903 M., K. 24 x 33 cm. Lenbachhaus, Munich; Fig. 17. V. Kandinsky. Kalmyuntz. Writing by Gabriele Munter. Summer 1903, Moscow, 58.2 x 58.5 cm. Lenbachhaus, Munich

In Kandinsky's sketches we see the same impressionistic manner and understanding of color, the same "melting" of the figure in the medium, especially in the first sketch of the horizontal format. The clear contours of the depicted objects – the figures of Gabriele from the back in the foreground under a bright white umbrella, the facades of the houses behind - are absent, the strokes are separate, wide and large thanks to the "spatula technique". The square-format sketch is characterized by a greater "severity" of the pictorial style: Kandinsky here chooses a restrained gray-brown color scheme and rigidly, graphically expressively "constructs" the figure of the artist with a portable easel in the extreme foreground, followed by dark tree trunks and arrays of graphite–gray house facades against a light sky.

From left to right: Fig. 18. V. Kandinsky. Gabriele Munter in the open air in front of an easel. 1910; Fig. 19. G. Munter. A boat trip with Kandinsky. 1909 M., K. 40.3 x 26 cm

    A very similar composition painting by Kandinsky in 1910 with the same subject – Gabriele Munter in profile against a mountain landscape (Fig. 18) demonstrates how much his artistic method has developed and changed in less than a decade. Fauvistically free local color spots, large-scale relations and masses, and an unconditional attraction to abstraction in this study (as well as others) by Kandinsky of the 1910s demonstrate his evolution towards pictorial abstraction. Made a year earlier, in 1909, Munter's sketch "Boat Trip with Kandinsky" (Fig. 19), where he is depicted standing in a boat against the background of mountains, shows that her picturesque language is developing synchronously with the teacher towards the same lapidarity, simplifications, brightness of the color spot, without leaving a hint the impressionistic approach of the early 1900s.

                                            Fig. 020. G. Munter. The garden in front of the Amsel Company in Kalmunz. 1903

    Kalmunz's landscape "The Garden in front of Rote Amsel", painted by Munter from the same point of view from which she is depicted in Kandinsky's sketch at the easel, is much sunnier and more impressionistic than the cold gray variation of the teacher (Fig. 20). The same direct positivist perception of reality is evident in it as in Kandinsky's Painting the Landscape: the colors are bright and fresh, the color mixes and attitudes resemble rural landscapes of the French Impressionists. Since the texture here is not green hills, but a city street, linear perspective, constructive structures and at the same time an abundance of air create a much more organized space than in the early sketch. And, when compared with the study of Kalmyunts Street, where Gabriele first used the technique of applying paint with a palette knife, the study "The Garden in front of Rote Amsel" is written technically more confidently: wide diagonally laid strokes with a spatula in the foreground, indicating, apparently, the stone-lined slope of the street, to which the yellow stairs lead, are replaced by horizontal strokes of ochre, "laying out" the paving stones of the pavement, and then lilac and blue elongated vertical strokes forming the facades of houses. The daytime sky in Munter's sketch, unlike Kandinsky's landscape, is painted almost realistically: white-purple clouds float on a light blue background.

               Il. 21. G. Munter. The motif is in Kalmunz. Color woodcut. 1903 . 18.9 x 30.5 cm . Lenbachhaus, Munich

    The woodcut "Motif in Kalmunz" (Fig. 21) with rocky formations on the riverbank in the vicinity of the city of Munter creates from summer pencil sketches next winter in Munich. The artist paints the rocks and the surface of the earth with shades of blue and brownish-green. The dynamically interpreted motif is characterized by graphic confidence: clearly emerging shapes, thick falling contrasting shadows. Once again, we see how the Munter graphic artist is "ahead" of the Munter painter in his creative evolution. Later, she would write about her pictorial and graphic searches and the evolution of creative tasks: "From the initial naturalistic sketches, I quickly came to an impressionistic brushstroke and at the same time to a color woodcut, which was, of course, a technical attempt to combine a concise interpretation of form with a flat wide color spot" ^{[8, p. 30]}

   From the picturesque heritage of Gabriele Munter of the period under review, it is also worth mentioning two easily and widely written studies "The Valley in Schlossberg in Kalmunz" (Fig. 22) and "Houses in Kalmunz" (Fig. 23). The first sketch of the horizontal format depicts a road among green hills and the outlines of a fortress in the distance on a hill. The sketch is painted broadly, with quick strokes, characterized by freshness of color and impressionistic incompleteness. The second, relatively small oil sketch "Houses in Kalmyunts" depicts a chain of houses on the banks of a stream. The facades are marked with large local strokes of a palette knife. Despite the generally restrained brownish-green palette of Munter's early plein air sketches, one can see patches of light red and bright white tones here. 

From left to right: Fig. 22. G. Munter. The valley in the Schlossberg in Kalmunz. 1903; Fig. 23. G. Munter. At home in Kalmyunts. 1903 M., K. 51 x 25 cm. Part of the collection.

     Thus, a number of the considered early works by Gabriele Munter, created during the plein air with Kandinsky in 1902-1903, allows us to see the prehistory of Munter, an expressionist and neo-fascist. We see how the young artist "struggles" with oil, mastering the "spatula technique", striving to liberate herself in painting: to learn how to disassemble large color relations, masses, to model the shape with color. Munter's painting style, like Kandinsky's, in these years was impressionism. At the same time, she draws and creates woodcuts a lot, and as a graphic artist she definitely feels more confident, achieving her tasks in an original and easy way. Later, calling herself primarily a draughtsman, not a painter, Gabriele Munter would write: "Whoever carefully examines my paintings finds a draughtsman in them" ^{[2, pp. 79-80]} and "I was so used to drawing since childhood that later, when I came to painting ... it seemed to me that the ability to draw I am innate, and I need to study painting" [ibid., p. 79].

    A new, Fauvist and neo-primitive understanding of form and color will appear in the paintings of Gabriele Munter of the next decade, the period of the "Blue Horseman". In all likelihood, her creative manner will be formed, among other things, thanks to: a spatula-a technique that helps, discarding the small, focus on large masses and relationships; experience in engraving, translating paintings and drawings into tonal, rigidly graphic structured, concise forms; in addition, further on the formation of her manner the work in decorative and applied arts, the opening of stained glass and folk art will be influenced, which also happened during the period of joint creativity and common passion for folk art with Kandinsky. Meanwhile, Kandinsky, like Munter, gradually recycles and outgrows his early pictorial impressionism, moving in the next decade towards abstraction. The first two years of Munter's formation as a painter considered by us are the years of her apprenticeship, the influence of a teacher and the search for her own creative path. The influence of Kandinsky (as an artist, teacher and a close person) on Munter during these years is obvious, as is also obvious that Munter, with the support and guidance of Kandinsky, is looking for an independent path in painting. "You are hopeless as a student – it is impossible to instill anything in you. You can only do what grows in you," Kandinsky would later say, convinced that her natural talent and artistic flair themselves lead her in the right direction ^{[6, p. 138]}. Gabriele Munter will write about him: "He accompanied my development and creativity until 1916, extremely subtly understanding, cherishing and supporting it, but never trying to influence it" [cit. po 8, p. 30].