"Im Zimmer" is one of the few large figure interiors that Gabriele Münter created during the period of the 'Blauer Reiter' and that occupy a prominent position in her work. Together with the two well-known paintings "Kandinsky and Erma Bossi at the Table", 1912 and "Man in an Armchair" (Paul Klee), 1913 (Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich), it forms a kind of triumvirate that occupies a special position in her oeuvre in terms of subject and format takes.
The picture was taken in Berlin in the summer of 1913, when Münter stayed with her sister Emmy and her brother-in-law Dr. Georg Schroeter was visiting. It shows Münter's eleven-year-old niece Elfriede (Friedel) reading in a domestic living room. The block-like figure of the girl in a white-grey dress sits in a dark-green armchair, her head with blond hair is lowered. In the left half of the picture, which is divided into smaller parts, there is another green armchair on which a little doll dressed in vermillion is placed as a striking color accent.
Two paintings placed one behind the other on the floor stand out as unusual elements in this half of the picture: a portrait of a woman on a blue background and a still life with a 'primitive' female nude sculpture. These two pictures, which, with their dark contours and simple areas of color, seem like a naïve condensation of Münter's painting, represent two real paintings. Both were painted by her niece Friedel and are still kept in the artist's estate today. With them, Münter not only reinforces the personal character of the portrait, but also introduces another central aspect of her own painting with the reference to 'children's art'. At about the same time as the French Cubists and their reception of 'primitive' non-European sculpture, the 'Blauer Reiter' circle had discovered folk art, Bavarian reverse glass painting, Russian leaflets and even children's art. Münter and Kandinsky began collecting children's drawings in 1908, and their estate includes a large number of around 250 sheets. Friedel's paintings are clearly based on the works of her aunt - who she may have portrayed in the portrait of a woman - and yet they bring their own touch to the picture.
Compared to her previous portraits, Münter's overall composition announces a slightly different form of expressionism. With its slight perspective on the room and the angular, broken, three-dimensional forms of the girl figure, "Im Zimmer" shows a new stylistic stage that has taken influences from Pablo Picasso and the 'Brücke' painters. The art of the 'Brücke' was particularly present to her in 1913 through the contacts of the 'Blauer Reiter' to their representatives in Berlin and also to Herwarth Walden's 'Sturm' gallery. The complexity of the pictorial connotations - the 'spiritual' conception of the portrait, the references to 'primitive' art and the multiple presence of 'femininity' in space - give this painting a unique position in Münter's oeuvre.
lenbachhaus
