The group of artists of inspiration expressionnist, Der Blaue Reiter ( the blue rider ) is formed starting from 1911 with Munich. Its main actors are Wassily Kandinsky, August Macke, Franz Marc, Paul Klee but one counts also names such as Gabriele Münter, Heinrich Campendonk, David Bruljuk.

This group is, of little, posterior with the other large German expressionnist group, born in Dresden in 1905: Die Brücke ( the bridge ).

History

January 29th 1909 is created the Neue Kunstlervereinigung München (New association of the artists of Munich, usually shortened by NKVM). It gathers modern artists of various schools, energy of the Néo-impressionnisme to the Art nouveau. The most famous representatives are Kandinsky, Münter, Alexej von Jawlensky, joined shortly after by Marc and Macke. In February 1911, Marc, who bound of friendship with not very front Kandinsky, enters with the NKVM. The name of " Blaue Reiter" is found by Kandinsky and Marc in order to give a title to a compilation of texts on the modern art. The title was selected in reference to the topic of predilection of Marc (the blue horse ) combined with that of the rider, expensive in Kandinsky. Under their impulse, the first exposure of the Almanac of Blaue Reiter opened on December 18th, 1911 in Munich, then traversed several German cities. What arises from the reading of the Almanac, it is the absence of any traditional division between the various artistic techniques: one finds at the same time a homogeneity of thought there, a common belief in the interior life of the artist, in the form like externalization of the creative intuition of the painter or the musician, in the bonds which link the art nouveaus with old arts, European arts with arts African or Asian, erudite or popular, bonds located at the subsoil of the man, in what it has of archetypal. The Almanac includes/understands a whole of articles of general esthetics which underline the will of their authors, not to lock up their thought in an immutable system, but to appear able to extend and ramify their sphere of activity as much as possible. The concept of vibration, of interior resonance, only able to found an authentic vocabulary of correspondences between colors, sounds and words, appears as a topic which underlies the entire Almanac. The musical thought incontestably constituted a source of reflection privileged for artists like Kandinsky, Kupka or Delaunay, which precisely sought the structures of organization of plastic space, likely to move away, to even escape the laws from the representation. The advent of the abstract art rather precisely coincides with an interest increased for the musical forms. It is in the sense that Kandinsky declared the music higher than painting in than it did not need to create " images" to generate feelings, emotions, affirming thus that it is in that our ear is quite higher in our eye. Many artists and musicians have taken part in his realization, in particular Scriabine, whose research on the conjunction of arts of time (music) and space (painting) generates a long line, which continues still nowadays, of creators whose research relates to the concept of synesthesia. This almanac gathers articles and chronicles of art only written by artists. Schönberg gives to it an article, its partition of Herzgewächse op.20 and two reproductions of its tables. Dissensions appear in this company between a preserving fraction and a progressist, carried out by Kandinsky, which tends towards the Abstraction. The scission is made shortly after the rejection of the majority of the group of a table of this last: Composition V .

The exposure-proclamation that they organize with the gallery Thannhauser in December 1911 calls also the blue Rider. At the conclusion of this exposure they resign of the NKVM, thus rejoining other artists with their group.

One second exposure is organized at Goltz in February 1912 joining together 315 graphic works German, Russian and French artists, as of works of the group Die Brücke (even if Kandinsky pronounced a very critical judgment on their production).

These exposures are important moments for the opening of the modern art in Germany. But unfortunately the project of the creation of a second almanac never leads because of the war which puts an end to the activities of the group: Marc and Macke are quickly killed in the engagements and Kandinsky is exiled in Russia.

In spite of its brevity, the Blue Rider truly marked a time: around this movement joined great creators linked by the same faith of spiritual revival of our civilization, imagining an art which knows “neither people, nor border, but only humanity” (Kandinsky). Beyond formal differences, this spiritual vision of art their made it possible to establish a fundamental relationship between the abstraction incipient and realism from a Douanier Rousseau, between arts of Africa or the Folklore Bavarian and the last productions of the European avant-garde. To summarize, the Blue Rider and more particularly the almanac do not merge with the artistic steps of the two creators, in the direction where the parallel between atonality and abstraction is not in the center of their contributions. Thus, the work is characterized by the extension of the artistic field which he proposes: on the one hand in space (primitive arts, Gothic, rebirth, coming from Europe or non-European, in fact African, Chinese…), in addition in various fields (visual arts, music, literature, art of the children…). The movement of the blue Rider represents an emanating example of unusual opening of an small group of avant-garde.