Collection: Der Blaue Reiter

Der Blaue Reiter, The Blue Rider, was founded in Munich in 1911 by Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc after their break from the Neue Künstlervereinigung München over the rejection of Kandinsky's Composition V from the December 1911 exhibition. The group's name came from a 1903 Kandinsky painting and from a shared affection for blue and for the figure of the rider.

The almanac Der Blaue Reiter, edited by Kandinsky and Marc and published in May 1912, gave the movement its theoretical centre, juxtaposing contemporary work with Bavarian glass painting, African sculpture, and child art under the conviction that all carried the same direct expressive force. The principal members were Kandinsky, Marc, August Macke, Paul Klee, Gabriele Münter, Marianne von Werefkin, Alexei Jawlensky, Heinrich Campendonk, Albert Bloch, David Burliuk, Lyonel Feininger, Alfred Kubin, and the composer Arnold Schoenberg.

The two exhibitions of 1911 and 1912 in Munich travelled to Cologne, Berlin, and Frankfurt. The First World War ended the movement abruptly, with Marc killed at Verdun in 1916 and Macke at Champagne in 1914.