Blaue Reiter, Der

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Blaue Reiter, Der

 

(The Blue Rider), an association of artists that existed in Munich from 1911 to 1914. Its work was close to expressionism. The founders of Der Blaue Reiter were W. Kandinsky and F. Marc, both of whom had previously belonged to the Neue Künstlervereinigung. The group’s members and exhibitors included A. Macke, G. Münter, H. Campendonck, and L. Feininger (German); A. G. Iavlenskii, M. V. Verevkina, and the brothers D. D. Burliuk and V. D. Burliuk (Russian); P. Klee (Swiss); R. Delaunay (French); and A. Kubin (Austrian). The German avant-garde composer A. Schönberg was associated with Der Blaue Reiter.

Some members of Der Blaue Reiter, for example, Kandinsky and Marc, very soon turned to abstract art. Many others, however, preserved to some extent a representational basis, emphasizing mystically interpreted pictorial elements. In the 1920’s some of the members of Der Blaue Reiter, including Kandinsky, Klee, and Feininger, became major figures in the Bauhaus school.

REFERENCES

Tikhomirov, A. “Ekspressionizm (Khudozhniki ob” edineniia ‘Sinii vsadnik’).” Modernizm, 1973. Pages 23–30.
Buchheim, L. G. Der Blaue Reiter und die “Neue Künstlervereinigung München.’ Feldafing, 1959.
Der Blaue Reiter. Edited by W. Kandinsky and F. Marc; new edition edited by K. Lankheit. Munich, 1965.

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.