
You might find your artistic endeavours overshadowed when a long-time partner is Wassily Kandinsky. But Gabriele Münter now enjoys independent recognition. The Leopold Museum brings us Austria’s first solo exhibition for this expressionist painter and leading light of the Avant-Garde in Germany.
- Full retrospective
- Covers various media
- …paintings, prints, photos & more
- 130+ exhibits
- Runs Oct 20, 2023 – Feb 18, 2024
- See also:
A retrospective

(Gabriele Münter, Promenade along the Seine, c. 1904 © Kunsthalle Emden, Henri and Eske Nannen Foundation, Donation Otto van den Loo, Photo: bpk/Kunsthalle Emden/Martinus Ekkenga © Bildrecht, Wien 2022)
According to one source, Gabriele Münter once wrote (my rough translation):
Many saw me as just an unnecessary accompaniment to Kandinsky. People easily forget that a woman can be creative and have original and genuine talent
(Not the first or last woman to suffer in such a way.)
Berlin-born Münter (1877-1962) spent well over a decade at Kandinsky’s side, but her work spans a far greater timeframe. And, despite the sentiments written in that 1926 diary entry, her art has come to be acknowledged as pioneering and important in its own right.
The Leopold Museum’s Münter retrospective ties her biographical and creative chronology together in themes, each relating to a stage of her life and each associated with artistic ramifications.

(View of the Gabriele Münter exhibition; press photo © Leopold Museum, Wien, 2023; photo by Lisa Rast)
We see, of course, works from the early 1910s. This was the time of the short-lived but seminal Der Blaue Reiter project initiated by Kandinsky and Franz Marc, but with Münter contributing significantly to the activities and art created in that context.
Many define Münter in connection with that groundbreaking period, where her painting became increasingly separated from the subject and even veered into the abstract.
The retrospective, however, also gives due attention to Münter’s wider oeuvre.
For example, the artist’s time in Scandinavia (in the late 1910s) saw her tackle more figurative and portrait-like motifs, and a later period in Paris had her drifting towards post-expressionist New Objectivity.
We also see, for example, Münter’s prints and photographs, her love for the latter medium inspired by a long tour of the USA with her sister at the turn of the century.

(Gabriele Münter, The Blue Lake, 1954 © Lentos Kunstmuseum Linz, Photo: LENTOS Kunstmuseum Linz/Reinhard Haider © Bildrecht, Wien 2023)
Those images of the southern USA seem an eon and a world away from the subsequent art, bringing home the momentous changes the world experienced as it entered the modern era.
The variety of media used by Münter certainly speaks to the kind of versatility that always leaves me impressed (and envious): oil painting, reverse glass painting, linocuts and woodcuts, photos, and even bead work, for example.
And the variety of styles is such that they might have been produced by different people. Another reminder how creativity and creative pursuits are influenced by age, experience and the environment (in its widest sense) we find ourselves in.
Although, as Münter herself noted in one of the wall quotes at the exhibition:
Often, my works seem to me to be too different from one another, but at other times, I think that it is one personality, after all, that creates these different works
Dates, tickets & tips
Explore Münter’s oeuvre from October 20th, 2023 to February 18th, 2024. An entrance ticket from or for the Leopold Museum includes the exhibitions within.
The museum has a concurrent event for another expressionist painter who deserves more attention. A solo exhibition for Max Oppenheimer runs across the whole course of the Münter retrospective.
How to get there
Follow the travel tips at the end of the main Leopold Museum article. The location is part of the central MuseumsQuartier complex, and the exhibition is on Level -2 (i.e. two floors below the entrance).
Address: MuseumsQuartier, Museumsplatz 1, 1070 Vienna