Stand at the window of Wassily Kandinsky’s bedroom, on the outskirts of Murnau, and you get a very pretty view. This is Bavaria just as it rumples, right on the edge of the Alps, and at the top of the hill opposite stands Murnau’s onion-domed church. Next door is its castle, and together they make an eye-catching landmark, one that must have been a constant reference point in Kandinsky’s life (he settled in the town in 1909). It would have been there when he got out of bed each morning, when he dug his beloved garden, and when he worked in his studio. Not surprisingly, it’s in his paintings too. One of them is Murnau with Church II, completed in 1910. Last year it set a new auction record for his work, when it sold for £37.2 million at Sotheby’s.
For fans of this groundbreaking Russian émigré, who led the charge towards abstract art before the First World War and is represented in a new exhibition at London’s Tate Modern, a visit to his home is thrilling — not least because in a cabinet beside that church view is one of his palettes, still smeared in paint. How many places in the world offer such a combination of an artist’s inspiration, and his colour-mixing, preserved in the same room?
Tate’s forthcoming exhibition, Expressionists, is not only about Kandinsky. Instead, it promises an examination of the movement he helped to launch, and which he worked tirelessly to publicise. Called the Blue Rider group, it harnessed the energy and ideas of a group of avant-garde artists based in Munich, who were in many respects years ahead of their time. Several were women, shrugging off the era’s chauvinism. Only one was Bavarian. And even though their collaboration was cut short by the outbreak of war in August 1914, plenty remains — not just of their work, but also of the world they inhabited. Fly to Munich and spend a night in the city — ideally in the grande dame of the city’s hotels, the gracious and recently updated Bayerischer Hof — then follow with a couple of days in Murnau, and you’ll get a proper sense of both the context and their work’s transformative power.
You’ll also enjoy several more helpings of Blue Rider art. The first is in the Bavarian capital. Unusually for a big Tate show, more than half its exhibits come from a single source. The Lenbachhaus sits on the edge of the city’s Kunstareal museum quarter and is the world’s principal storehouse of the group’s work. Even without the 60-odd pieces on loan to London, there’s plenty to justify a trip, not least because some of the movement’s key paintings are too fragile to transport (£8.50; lenbachhaus.de).
The portrait of the androgynous dancer Alexander Sacharoff by Alexej von Jawlensky is the most famous. He hangs on a far wall of the museum, fixing you with his mascara gaze: defiant, provocative and almost as modern now as he was in 1909. The Tate curator Natalia Sidlina would have loved to have him for the show, but look closer and you’ll notice a long strip of sage-green paint has fallen off just above Sacharoff’s shoulder, revealing the orange-brown cardboard beneath. This is a painting that will never, ever leave Munich.
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From here, it’s not far to the district that brought these mould-breaking artists together. Schwabing, just north of the city centre, is affluent and gentrified these days, but for a flavour of its bohemian past, head to the Schelling-Salon on its western edge (schelling-salon.de). The giant pub and pool hall has been run by the Mehr family for 152 years, and is more or less unchanged since the days when Kandinsky was a visitor. It still has a grungy atmosphere; all that’s missing is the 20th-century fog of tobacco smoke through which you might have glimpsed some epoch-defining faces. Lenin is thought to have been a regular, when he lived in Munich between 1900 and 1902. So too was Adolf Hitler, though it’s said he was later barred for not paying his bills.
Murnau, 36 miles southwestwards, was altogether more genteel. A former trading hub, it was already developing as a kind of country resort for the middle classes, and its carefully curated streets of cafés, shops and inns have survived more or less intact. Kandinsky first visited it in 1902, but it was a painting holiday in the summer of 1908 that persuaded him to stay. He’d recently returned from a nomadic four-year tour of Europe and Tunisia, accompanied by his fellow artist and lover Gabriele Münter.
They came at the invitation of Von Jawlensky and his partner Marianne von Werefkin, both of whom were buzzing with new ideas. Together, the four painters abandoned old-school realism and let their colours off the leash. The change in their art was sudden, expressive and beautiful, most notably in the work of Kandinsky. He was out of the traps like a greyhound, racing towards a new horizon, and within a year he’d persuaded Münter (who was far more financially secure than him) to buy a house there. It was their full-time summer residence until the First World War.
These days, the train takes about 50 minutes to saunter from Munich to Murnau, through lush Bavarian farmland. But a hire car will make the excursion to the Franz Marc Museum easier; it’s 20 minutes on from Murnau, on the western shore of Kochelsee, and dedicated to a key Blue Rider member, Franz Marc (£8; franz-marc-museum.de). Meanwhile, back at Murnau, the Schlossmuseum is home to another impressive collection of Blue Rider work, with a particular emphasis on Münter (£10; schlossmuseum-murnau.de). Back in London, her 1909 portrait of Von Werefkin — warm, passionate, intimidating — is sure to be a highlight of the new Tate exhibition.
The more you see, the more emphatic the sense becomes that this was a collaborative enterprise, nurtured by Munich’s wealth, diversity and its increasingly open-minded art scene. But even so, nowhere is quite so evocative as the solitary, private space of Kandinsky’s bedroom, up on the top floor of what is now known as the Münter Haus (£2.50; muenter-stiftung.de). It’s a busy place in summer, so come just before it closes at 5pm, when most visitors’ minds turn to supper and they begin to drift away.
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If you’ve ever drooled over a Kandinsky painting from this period you’ll notice two things immediately. One is the familiarity of the colours on the palette. Lemon yellow, lime green, cadmium red, all kinds of moody blues; these are the building blocks from which he assembled some of the most joyful paintings of early 20th-century art. The other is how different Murnau’s church tower and castle look from the teetering, playful shapes that characterised his increasingly abstract work. And that’s just how it should be. After all, it was Kandinsky’s art that filled the gap between them. Standing there, where he did, you can almost feel his presence.
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Sean Newsom was a guest of Tate, the Bayerischer Hof, which has room-only doubles from £338 (bayerischerhof.de), and the Alpenhof Murnau, which has B&B doubles from £207 (alpenhof-murnau.com). Expressionists: Kandinsky, Münter and the Blue Rider runs from April 25-October 20 (£22; tate.org.uk)
Three more Bavarian trips
1. Walking in southern Bavaria
The famous frescoed village of Oberammergau is your base on this flexible self-guided walking tour, with short and long hikes offered each day (the longest is 14 miles, the shortest 4). The emphasis throughout is on relatively easy terrain, but that won’t diminish the sense of wonder. Along the way, you’ll discover the wildly ornate monastery at Ettal, visit a refuge for 60 bird species and ride a mountain lift to the knife-edge Sonnenberg ridge.
Details Seven nights’ half-board from £1,219pp, including flights (exodus.co.uk)
2. King Ludwig II and the Wittelsbach palaces of Bavaria
The architectural historian Tom Abbott leads this two-pronged attack on royal Bavaria. Subject one is the wildly extravagant King Ludwig II, who was declared insane in 1886 and may have been murdered. Subject two is the 738-year dynasty from which he sprang, which had long been known for its vast palaces. En route, you’ll visit eight of them, ranging from the baroque magnificence of Schleissheim to Ludwig’s fairytale Neuschwanstein Castle, built on a mountaintop in homage to one of his heroes, the composer Richard Wagner.
Details Five nights’ half-board from £3,320pp (martinrandall.com). Fly to Munich
3. Cycling round Bavaria’s biggest lake
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No-sweat cycling awaits around Bavaria’s biggest lake. Chiemsee may sit within sight of the Alps, but its immediate hinterland is far mellower, and on this self-guided cycling holiday you’ll explore its castles, nature reserves and neighbouring valleys. Throughout the trip the pretty four-star Garden Hotel Reinhart will be your base. It has an indoor swimming pool, perfect for stretching your muscles at the end of each day’s ride — though if the sun’s out you may prefer to jump into the lake, only 100 yards from the front door.
Details Seven nights’ B&B from £1,509pp, including flights, bicycle hire and two boat trips (headwater.com)
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