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Beer swilling, glass clinking, lederhosen and dirndls. Few cities are saddled with such a one-dimensional image – at least from a tourist point of view – as Munich. Indeed, the arrival of Harry Kane has served as a reminder of his footballing legacy and – for petrol heads – the BMW museum on the ring road remains a place of pilgrimage. But it’s October’s beer festival that gets all the attention.
It’s a pity. Thanks to its long history at the crossroads of Europe, Munich’s cultural credentials are much wider and deeper than this. Not only does it have a superb collection of medieval, Renaissance and Baroque art amassed by a succession of powerful rulers, it has also, as a new exhibition at Tate Modern highlights, been a vital center for contemporary art.
In the years before the First World War, the Bohemian quarter of Schwabing was the intellectual and creative crucible of German Expressionism and some of Europe’s earliest experiments in abstract painting. A small coterie of artists – including Gabriele Münter, Franz Marc, August Macke, Paul Klee and Russian émigrés Wassily Kandinsky, Marianne von Werefkin and Alexej von Jawlensky – founded the Blue Rider movement. (It’s a strange name I know, Kandinsky’s explanation was that he combined his own love of riding, Marc’s love of horses and their shared affinity for the color blue.)
The group held two pioneering exhibitions, in 1911 and 1912, characterized by haunting, dreamlike imagery and rich, otherworldly colours. They tended to use naive folk art as a frame of reference rather than an academic tradition. Perhaps most significantly, Klee and Kandinsky also experimented with abstraction – they were among the first artists in centuries to eschew representational art.
Like their London counterparts, the Bloomsbury Group, they also liked to get out of the city and have fun in the countryside. Their favorite place was the Bavarian lake district in the foothills of the Alps. Münter built a house in one of the nicest towns – Murnau, on the edge of the Staffelsee. Her lover, Kandinsky, moved in and, until the First World War intervened, they would host their friends from Munich, painting, swimming and intellectualizing under the Alpine sun.
It was a short, rude moment. Macke and Marc were killed in the First World War and Kandinsky and Münter fled the country. But much of the wonderful art they produced remains in Munich and – much less known to British tourists – in a series of atmospheric museums in the most beautiful part of the lake district. Here’s how to explore the city and its artistic hinterland.
Lenbachhaus Museum
This beautiful late 19th century villa was built by the painter Franz von Lenbach. It became a museum and, in 2009, Norman Foster extended what is now the most important collection of the Blue Rider collections, including the donation of many works by Kandinsky, Klee and Münter himself (lenbachhaus.de).
Murnau and the Bavarian lake district
Murnau is a small town only an hour from Munich by train, ideally located near the Staffelsee lake, with the Bavarian Alps beyond. In the early 20th century it was developed as a chi-chi summer resort for the city’s middle classes and soon became a favorite of artists as well. Münter and Kandinsky came here to paint in the summer of 1908, staying at the Griesbräu hotel (griesbraeu.de) – you can still book room 12, from where Kandinsky painted the view down the main street (now in the Lenbachhaus) .
Schwabing area
Once a masterpiece of shabby Bohemian chic, this leafy suburb of Munich was heavily damaged during the war and then gentrified in recent years. But you can still feel something about the atmosphere of a century and more ago. And the English Gardens are still the most beautiful public park in Munich.
Pinakothek der Moderne has a broad overview of modern art, focusing on paintings and sculpture from 1900 to the present day, including some of the most important works by the Blue Rider painters (pinakothek-der-moderne.de) .
The Munter House
Gabriele Münter built this small house on the edge of town in 1909, and she and Kandinsky spent much of their time here, decorating the walls and furniture and working on the garden and potager. There was no formal artist studio, but they would paint outside in good weather or take in the views from the windows. This was the main social hub for the Blue Rider group outside Munich and is now a museum with a collection of paintings by Münter and a few other treasures such as Kandinsky’s Russian samovar (he was an avid tea drinker) ( muenter-stiftung.de ).
Schloss Museum
The local museum, adapted from a former medieval castle, has three galleries devoted to the work of Münter, Kandinsky, Von Jawlensky and Marc (discover-bavaria.com).
Kochel am See
Marc was a founding member of the Blue Rider group but his career was cut short when he was killed at Verdun in 1916. He first had summer homes at nearby Sindelsdorf and then in the village of Kochel am See, about 10 miles from Murnau, where yes it has been. His original home is privately owned but this magnificent villa overlooking the Kochelsee has been converted into the Franz Marc Museum dedicated to his work and that of other Blue Rider painters including Klee, Macke, Münter and Kandinsky (franz-marc-museum . of).
