Women of The Blue Rider

HIGHLIGHT 2026

23 Oct 26 — 21 Feb 27

“Dear Princess, noble wild boy, sweet painter, when may I come — I dream of the sweetness of your paintings. (The Prince of Thebes) Else Lasker-Schüler (Friend of the Blue Rider rider.)”

Else Lasker-Schüler to Marianne von Werefkin 1913

„Der Blaue Reiter“ (The Blue Rider) was a collective of artists who made transformative contributions to painting, graphic art, literature, and music. With its two exhibitions organized in 1911 and 1912 and the almanac published in 1912, it stands for subjectivity in art, the liberation of color from the object, and the idea of equality between artistic forms of expression from different eras, genres, and regions. It is thus part of the international avant-garde movements before the First World War.

Gabriele Münter, Portrait of Marianne von Werefkin, 1909. Municipal Gallery in the Lenbachhaus and Kunstbau Munich, Gabriele Münter Foundation 1957 © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2025
Gabriele Münter, Portrait of Marianne von Werefkin, 1909. Municipal Gallery in the Lenbachhaus and Kunstbau Munich, Gabriele Münter Foundation 1957 © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2025
Erma Bossi, Portrait of Marianne von Werefkin, around 1910. Municipal Gallery in the Lenbachhaus and Kunstbau Munich, on permanent loan from the Gabriele Münter and Johannes Eichner Foundation, Munich
Erma Bossi, Portrait of Marianne von Werefkin, around 1910. Municipal Gallery in the Lenbachhaus and Kunstbau Munich, on permanent loan from the Gabriele Münter and Johannes Eichner Foundation, Munich

To this day, it remains almost completely unexplored what a significant role the individual female artists associated with Der Blaue Reiter played in the development of modernism, what strategies and networks they devised in order to lead a life as independent artists despite the prevailing social norms of the time, which were completely hostile to them, And who were all these artists, some of whom have been completely forgotten and whose lives can hardly be reconstructed? These are the themes of the exhibition Die Blauen Reiterinnen (The Blue Rider Women). And here they are:

Erma Bossi — Sonia Delaunay-Terk — Emmi Dresler — Elisabeth Epstein — Elisabeth Erdmann-Macke — Natalia Gontscharowa — Else Lasker-Schüler — Maria Franck-Marc — Olga Meerson — Gabriele Münter — Carla Pohle — Marianne von Werefkin

An exhibition in cooperation with the Paula Modersohn-Becker Museum in Bremen and the Städtischen Galerie im Lenbachhaus and Kunstbau Munich and the Fondazione Marianne Werefkin in Ascona, Switzerland.

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