{"id":724951,"date":"2025-11-22T14:52:05","date_gmt":"2025-11-22T11:52:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=724951"},"modified":"2025-11-22T14:52:05","modified_gmt":"2025-11-22T11:52:05","slug":"at-the-guggenheim-a-dynamic-survey-for-an-expressionist-maestra","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=724951","title":{"rendered":"At the Guggenheim, a Dynamic Survey for an Expressionist Maestra"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Arts<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

At the Guggenheim, a Dynamic Survey for an Expressionist Maestra<\/h1>\n
By <\/span>Fiorella Valdesolo<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

November 22, 2025<\/p>\n

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    Gabriele Mu\u0308nter, Self-Portrait in Front of an Easel<\/em> (Selbstbildnis vor der Staffelei<\/em>), ca. 1908\u201309. Oil on canvas, 30 11\/16 \u00d7 23 13\/16 in. (78 \u00d7 60.5 cm).<\/span>\u00a9 2025 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York \/ VG Bild- Kunst, Bonn. Photo: Bruce M. White, Princeton University Art Museum \/ Art Resource, NY<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n<\/div>\n
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    I arrived at the Guggenheim for \u201cContours of a World,\u201d the new show devoted to the late German artist Gabriele M\u00fcnter, with what I thought was a deep appreciation of, and pretty solid familiarity with, her work. I was quickly proven wrong.<\/p>\n

    The first gallery I stepped into was full of black-and-white photographs; until then, I had only known M\u00fcnter to paint. \u201cShe picked up a camera before she even picked up a brush,\u201d says Guggenheim curator Megan Fontanella; the Guggenheim\u2019s survey marks the first time her photographs have been exhibited in the United States.<\/p>\n

    \u201cContours of a World\u201d also examines another overlooked force within M\u00fcnter\u2019s practice. Though she is closely associated with German Expressionism\u2014even if her work was long overshadowed by her relationship with Wassily Kandinsky\u2014in her early adulthood, M\u00fcnter and her family spent significant time in America. Between 1898 and 1900, she traveled with her sister through Arkansas, Missouri, and Texas, using birthday money to buy herself a No. 2 Bulls-Eye Kodak camera to chronicle what her 23-year-old eyes saw.<\/p>\n

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    She was a keen and curious observer from the start, and one who understood how to play with composition. One photograph shows a young girl in a stiff pinafore, her hair twisted into ringlets and head tilted away from the sun. (One of the long shadows cast around her clearly belongs to M\u00fcnter, the subtle incorporation of the artist into the frame somewhat reminiscent of Vivian Maier.) In another, called \u201cThree Women,\u201d M\u00fcnter captures three elegantly dressed Black women bookended by white children who stare as they stride through the town of Marshall, Texas for the Emancipation Day Festival on June 19, 1900\u2014a day that has come to be known as Juneteenth. M\u00fcnter would write to her brother back in Germany that she \u201cwas snapping as if her body and soul depended on it,\u201d clearly understanding that she was bearing witness to something vitally important.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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    Gabriele Mu\u0308nter, Breakfast of the Birds<\/em> (Das Fru\u0308hstu\u0308ck der Vo\u0308gel<\/em>), March 10, 1934. Oil on board, 18 \u00d7 21 3\/4 in. (45.7 \u00d7 55.2 cm). National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C., Gift of Wallace and Wilhelmina Holladay.<\/p>\n

    <\/span>\u00a9 2025 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York \/ VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn. Photo: Courtesy National Museum of Women in the Arts<\/span><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

    Fontanella sees M\u00fcnter\u2019s early experimentation with photography as a prelude to the paintings that would follow when she returned to Europe: her experiments with framing, perception, depth of field, and the interplay of light and shadow in her photography would come to life on her canvases, too. It\u2019s clear in a painting like Breakfast of the Birds<\/em> (1934), a work peculiar for the fact that its subject is turned away from the viewer. \u201cM\u00fcnter is thinking through layering what\u2019s a close view, what\u2019s a distance view, and what\u2019s situated in the middle ground, and how it affects spatial relationships and perspective,\u201d Fontanella says, \u201cwhich is all tied to her looking through the lens.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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    Gabriele Mu\u0308nter, From the Griesbra\u0308u Window<\/em> (Vom Griesbra\u0308u Fenster<\/em>), 1908. Painting on board, 13 \u00d7 15 13\/16 in. (33 \u00d7 40.1 cm).<\/p>\n

    <\/span>\u00a9 2025 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York \/ VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn<\/span><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

    Across her work, M\u00fcnter is looking intently at life\u2019s goings on, and\u2014as the show\u2019s title suggests\u2014making plain certain facets and contours, whether her subject was a friend, like the painter Gertrude Holz, or a random living room in Murnau, or scaffolding on a Parisian street. \u201cI extract the most expressive aspects of reality and depict them simply, to the point, with no frills\u2026 the forms gather in outlines, the colors become fields, and contours\u2014images\u2014of the world emerge,\u201d M\u00fcnter one said, words that provide a sort of epigraph for the exhibit.<\/p>\n

    \u201cHer adherence to life is what made her radical in her own time, when so many artists were thinking through fractured picture planes and moving towards this more abstract language as synonymous with modernity,\u201d says Fontanella. \u201cShe was really pioneering by looking at the world around her.\u201d<\/p>\n

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    Gabriele Mu\u0308nter, Portrait of Anna Roslund<\/em> (Bildnis Anna Roslund<\/em>), 1917. Oil on canvas, 37 3\/16 \u00d7 26 15\/16 in. (94.5 \u00d7 68.5 cm).<\/p>\n

    <\/span>\u00a9 2025 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York \/ VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn. Photo: Reproduced courtesy of Leicester Museums and Galleries<\/span><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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    So why has it taken so long for the art world to give M\u00fcnter her moment? For the Guggenheim, the current exhibit serves as a course correction: the museum has only one 1930s-era painting by M\u00fcnter in their permanent collection\u2014a holding otherwise dominated by male peers of hers like Kandinsky and Franz Marc. \u201cThis show is a chance for us to say this is an artist we wish was more strongly represented in our collection,\u201d says Fontanella.<\/p>\n

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    Gabriele Mu\u0308nter, Still Life on the Tram (After Shopping)<\/em> (Stillleben in der Trambahn [Nach dem Einkauf]<\/em>), ca. 1909\u201312. Painting on board, 19 3\/4 \u00d7 13 1\/2 in. (50.2 \u00d7 34.3 cm).<\/p>\n

    <\/span>\u00a9 2025 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York \/ VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn<\/span><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

    Her hope is that exhibits like this one that emphasize the multiplicity of modernism will open the door for highlighting other overlooked artists in the future. But for M\u00fcnter, her time is now. As the pace of information and images being thrown at us in our daily lives continues to pick up speed, her art, and the slow, introspective looking it invites us to do, feels like an antidote. As Fontanella puts it: \u201cM\u00fcnter always rewards you for spending time with her paintings.\u201d<\/p>\n

    \u201cGabriele M\u00fcnter: Contours of a World\u201d is on view at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York through April 26, 2026.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n

    Source URL: http:\/\/vogue.com\/article\/gabriele-munter-contours-of-a-world-guggenheim<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Arts At the Guggenheim, a Dynamic Survey for an Expressionist Maestra By Fiorella Valdesolo November 22, 2025 Gabriele Mu\u0308nter, Self-Portrait in Front of an Easel (Selbstbildnis vor der Staffelei), ca. 1908\u201309. Oil on canvas, 30 11\/16 \u00d7 23 13\/16 in. (78 \u00d7 60.5 cm).\u00a9 2025 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York \/ VG Bild- Kunst, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":724952,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[50],"class_list":["post-724951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-vogue-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/724951","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=724951"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/724951\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/724952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=724951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=724951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=724951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}