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 book presents a representative selection of Kandinsky's exquisite watercolors, including rare, early works that have never been exhibited before, and dramatic pictures on dark backgrounds from the last years of Kandinsky's life. The authors, both of whom are leading Kandinsky experts, provide a wealth of information on the artist's early career, on his circle of colleagues, and on the extensive records he kept of the people who acquired and promoted his art. A chronology elucidates the crucial phases of Kandinsky's development.

This is a collection of work housed in the Lenbachhaus in Munich of the artist's group, The Blue Rider, which became a symbol of revolution in modern art in the early 20th century. Their preoccupation was with abstraction, the forces and laws of nature, primitive art, and the .role of colour. The work of Vassily Kadinsky, Franz Marc and Paul Klee have since become avant-garde icons known throughout the world. The Lenbachhaus possesses the world's finest collection of works by these artists and this volume brings together some 120 highlights.

The outstanding collection of works on paper by the Blue Rider group of artists in the Lenbachhaus is being presented for the first time. This book reproduces the watercolours, drawings, and prints from the collection in whole page illustrations and relates the works to each other.

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).

"[August Macke and Franz Marc] conducted many long and involved discussions about the goals of art, coming to both similar and different conclusions. These dialogues enabled each of them to stake out his own position and provided the impetus driving their exchange. While Macke's art referred directly to the world he saw around him, his images deriving their authenticity from the sensual presence of that world, Marc sought to arrive at a spiritual understanding of the world and strove to develop art forms that would render visible the unity of being in his pictures. Divided into several sections, the exhibition traces the development of both artists from 1910 onward : from their first encounters in Tegernsee, Sindelsdorf, and later Bonn, to their early preoccupation with the theory of color, their work within the Blue Rider, and their participation in important exhibitions, such as those staged by the Cologne Sonderbund and the Erster Deutscher Herbstsalon. In its portrayal of the journeys they undertook together, their reciprocal visits and gifts, and the execution of arts and crafts works, the exhibition also attests to the key role played in their deepening friendship by the two artists' wives, Elisabeth Macke and Maria Marc. Their bond culminated in 1912 in the mural Paradise, jointly painted in Macke's Bonne studio. The exhibition also shows in some detail how Macke and Marc incorporated the ideas of Fauvism, Cubism, Futurism, and Orphism in their work as well as the positions they adopted on the notion of non-representative art. Out of these influences and ideas each evolved an art of his own, a trajectory that the exhibition documents right up to the final pictures produced in 1914, when the catastrophe of war brought an abrupt end to their lives and work."--Foreword.

Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944) was a Russian painter credited as being among the first to truly venture into abstract art. He persisted in expressing his internal world of abstraction despite negative criticism from his peers. He veered away from painting that could be viewed as representational in order to express his emotions, leading to his unique use of colour and form. Although his works received heavy censure at the time, in later years they would become greatly influential.

Kubin is irrefutably one of the most original talents of his generation. Whether painting directly from his hallucinatory visions or illustrating the works of such literary giants as Balzac, Poe, Dostoevsky, and Gogol, Kubin eschewed the decorative artistry of earlier Austrian art. Instead, he was drawn to life's dark undertones, represented in his work through his morbid subject matter and frenetic style. Filled with horrific yet fully realized imaginings that were eerily prescient of the era to come, this volume is certain to introduce Kubin to a wider audience perhaps to an entire generation who see in art a way to contend with the upheaval and tribulation of their own time.