The acute gaze of Gabriele Münter

Breakfast of the Birds (Das Frühstück der Vögel) (March 10, 1934) is reproduced from Gabriele Münter: Contours of a World, published to accompany the landmark exhibition on view at Guggenheim Museum through April 2026. Long overlooked in favor of her male counterparts in the Blaue Reiter movement—which she actually cofounded—this major survey places Münter front and center among contemporaries like Wassily Kandinsky, her one-time romantic partner. “Misnomers of ‘naïve’ and ‘natural’ were applied to a practice that astutely interrogated concepts of identity and authenticity, form and color,” exhibition curator Megan Fontanella writes. “In the years 1908 to 1914, the artist’s still-life ‘experiments,’ as she called them, distinguished her production and helped establish Münter’s public identity. She reimagined the still life—historically characterized as among the so-called lesser academic pursuits—and, with her acute gaze, unlocked its potential for radical originality. In doing so, Münter challenged perceptions of both the genre and the capabilities of women artists with compositions that at once empower and disarm the viewer, transforming the ordinary into the remarkable.”

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