The Blaue Reiter (Blue Rider) art movement was founded in 1911, by the young painters Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc, and remained active in Europe until 1914. Originally published in Munich, in 1912, and edited by Kandinsky and Marc, The Blaue Reiter Almanac presented the movement's synthesis of international culture to the European avant-garde at large. In both the selection of the essays and its innovative interplay of word and image, the Almanac remains one of the most critically important works on artistic theory and culture of the twentieth century. This edition, long unavailable in English and indispensable to any student of modernism, includes the original documents and musical notations, as well as essays by Kandinsky, Schonberg, Marc, and others, and an extensive critical introduction, placing the Blaue Reiter in context for contemporary readers.

For just a few years at the beginning of the twentieth century, Munich was the ?hot spot? of Germany?s artistic avant-garde. Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc?s initiative as founding editors of the almanac Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) was a stroke of luck for the arts. The journal and exhibition of the same name made international waves when they heralded the start of the modern era in Germany before the First World War. Since then, the names of the movement?s key players Franz Marc, Gabriele Münter, Alexej von Jawlensky, August Macke et al., signal an essential chapter in the international history of art marked by the transition of painting into a vibrant, colorful and transcendental form of abstraction. This beautiful publication that dedicates itself to this topic will show a revolutionary re-valuation of the arts in an open Europe.00Exhibition: Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel, Switzerland (4.9.2016-22.1.2017).

This book presents new research on the histories and legacies of the German Expressionist group Blaue Reiter, the founding force behind modernist abstraction. For the first time Blaue Reiter is subjected to a variety of novel inter-disciplinary perspectives, ranging from a philosophical enquiry into its language and visual perception to analyses of its gender dynamics, its reception at different historical junctures throughout the twentieth century and its legacies for post-colonial aesthetic practices. The volume offers a new perspective on familiar aspects of Expressionism and abstraction, taking seriously the inheritance of modernism for the twenty-first century in ways that will help to recalibrate the field of Expressionist studies for future scholarship. Blaue Reiter still matters, the contributors argue, because the legacies of abstraction are still being debated by artists, writers, philosophers and cultural theorists today.

Study of the Russian painter and 'inventor' of Abstract Art, Vasily Kandinsky (1866-1944) and the European artists who formed the 'Blaue Reiter' group from 1911 onwards

Now in an updated English edition with full color illustrations, Kandinsky's fascinating and witty artist's book represents a crucial moment in the painter's move toward abstraction.

Works by Kandinsky, Marc, and Klee are avant-garde icons known the world over. The Lenbachhaus in Munich, Germany, possesses the world's finest collection of works by these artists.

This groundbreaking examination of the cultural exchange between early 20th century French and German artists illuminates new ways of understanding the development of Expressionism. Although the Expressionist movement is widely considered to have arisen out of a German aesthetic, it was actually as much a result of German artists' exposure to artists living and working in France, such as van Gogh, Seurat, Gauguin, Cezanne, Matisse, Picasso, and Braque. In fact, in its early days, Expressionism was assigned no specific nationality at all. This fascinating book focuses on the key exhibitions, galleries, and museum directors that helped disseminate styles and techniques of revolutionary French artists throughout Germany. Included here are French masterpieces seen not only by German artists in Paris but also in important galleries, exhibitions, and private collections in Berlin, Dresden, Munich, Weimar, and other cities. More than 100 paintings and works on paper are grouped to encourage an understanding of artistic influence and interchange. The volume also reflects new scholarship on issues of French-German relations and contributes to our understanding of the ways the visual arts are influenced by ideas of national identity and cultural heritage."

The intellectual dialogue and friendship between two key modernist artists - the painter Wassily Kandinsky and the composer Arnold Schoenberg - forms the focal point of this fascinating survey, charting the early 20th century parallel movements towards abstraction in art and atonality in music.