An exhibition by the Beyeler Foundation in Basel is bringing Switzerland’s first major re-examination of The Blue Rider art movement in 30 years.
Landscapes, animals, abstract compositions in colourful, wild colors – this is The Blue Rider, an avant-garde art movement that arose in the early 20th century from the friendship between Russian emigrants like Wassily Kandinsky and German artists including Franz Marc.
The works of Kandinsky and Marc expressed a revolutionary new sense of art and understanding of the world. The them the important thing was not a picture of visible reality, but to represent the visualisation of our mental perceptions. This is particularly evident in the liberation of colour.
Although the movement stalled in 1914 with the outbreak of World War I, The Blue Rider remained of the most important pioneers of modern 20th century art.
The exhibition brings together more than 90 works from museums and private collections. The Blue Rider was a synonym for departure into uncharted artistic territory, and it originally was the title of a famous almanac edited by Kandinsky and Marc in 1912. The almanac was a kind of polemic to document what they saw as the need for upheaval in the arts.
The exhibition runs from September 4, 2016 until January 22, 2017.
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Klee and Kandinsky first met in 1911 as neighbours in the northern Munich borough of Schwabing. In 1922, their paths crossed again at the famous Bauhaus art school in Weimar. In 1925, they moved to Dessau where the Bauhaus school was relocated. There they lived next door to the newly built houses designed by the…
Artists and friends who changed the course of art history
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The exhibition, at Berne’s Kunstmuseum (Museum of Fine Arts), is subtitled “Paul Klee, August Macke and their painter friends”. Klee, who was born near Berne in 1879, met the German-born Macke shortly before the First World War. They became part of a circle of friends which included Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc, Alexej Jawlensky and Louis…
You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here. Please join us!
If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.