Kandinsky, Marc und der Blaue Reiter

“We invented the Blaue Reiter while sitting at the coffee table … both of us loved blue. Franz Marc, the horses; I liked the riders. So the name arose spontaneously,” recalled Wassily Kandinsky. They both wanted to break with the old, academic painting traditions, create a platform for a new stylistic vocabulary that would offer room for multifaceted forms of expression, based on their shared belief in a “spiritual” dimension of art. In 1912 they assembled a programmatic volume: Der Blaue Reiter Almanach (The Blue Rider Almanac). It gathered texts and images from a variety of cultures, by various artists. Woodcuts from Borneo were included, as was Russian folk art, along with naïve and abstract contemporary art. Starting with the written work, which served as the foundation for Kandinsky’s and Marc’s oeuvres, this exquisite volume presents key works by both founding fathers, together with historical photographs. Exhibition: Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/basel 4.9.2016–22.1.2017