Der Blaue Reiter

also: The Blue Rider

movement 1911-1914 Germany Europe

Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) was a loose circle of Expressionist artists formed in Munich in 1911 by Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc after they broke away from the conservative Neue Künstlervereinigung München. Named after Kandinsky's 1903 painting, the group aimed to express spiritual and emotional truths rather than visible appearances, treating abstraction, color, music, and folk art as equal resources. Its landmark publication, the Der Blaue Reiter Almanach (1912), paired essays with reproductions and music by Arnold Schoenberg and his circle. Two Munich exhibitions, in 1911 and 1912, presented the group's artists alongside French and Russian contemporaries. The circle dissolved with the outbreak of the First World War, which killed both August Macke and Franz Marc; its ideas about color and abstraction carried deep into twentieth-century art.

Cover of Der Blaue Reiter almanac. (c. 1912)
Cover of Der Blaue Reiter almanac. (c. 1912)Public domain (credit: Wassily Kandinsky) · source

Defining characteristics

  • Explosive, non-naturalistic color used for emotional and spiritual effect
  • Forms loosening toward abstraction, subjects reduced to essential shapes
  • Soft, luminous watercolor washes alongside bold oil paint
  • Compositions echoing music: rhythm, syncopation, and inner sound (Klang)
  • Folk-art and naive influences: Bavarian glass painting, children's drawings
  • Symbolic motifs - horses, riders, mountains - treated as spiritual emblems

Key figures

  • Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944) — Founder and theorist who pushed the group toward pure abstraction
  • Franz Marc (1880-1916) — Co-founder whose animal paintings sought spiritual purity in nature
  • August Macke (1887-1914) — Master of luminous color, killed on the Western Front in 1914
  • Gabriele Münter (1877-1962) — Painter and patron who preserved much of the group's work in Murnau
  • Paul Klee (1879-1940) — Joined the circle's second exhibition in 1912 with his personal pictographic language

Example works

Sources

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