March 24th 2026
About twenty members attended the second Talking Art meeting of the year. We looked at Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) group of artists which lit the touchpaper of a firework display of colourful paintings from 1911, flourished for a few years, only to be engulfed by the cataclysm of the First World War. Extinguished as a group, perhaps, but their legacy of spiritual expressionism survived and informed the art of many subsequent practitioners. Founded by the Russian Emigre, Wassily Kandinsky and including his student and companion Gabriele Münter, with Auguste Macke and Franz Marc (both of whom died tragically young in the war, aged twenty seven and thirty six), the Swiss-born Paul Klee, the German-American Lyonel Feininger, and the revolutionary Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg, it was more of an exhibiting group than a specific, coherent movement such as the other German expressionist group Die Brucke. They published one edition of the Blue Rider Almanac. Kandinsky experienced chromesthesia, that is sounds induced a perception of specific colours. His painting Impression III (Concert) was inspired by a concert of piano pieces by Schoenberg (also a considerable painter of expressionist works) who became a friend and correspondent. After the war Kandinsky, Klee and Feininger went on to teach at the legendary Bauhaus school of art and design. During the rise of Nazism and their attack on modern art, Münter concealed many of Kandinsky’s and those of other Blue Rider artist’s works in her house in Murnau, which is now a foundation open to the public.
Our next meeting will look at the anti-art movement Dada.
The meeting will be at the Javea Players’ Studio Theatre. Doors open at 10.30 for the meeting at 11.00 am. 2euros contribution towards hall rental.
Contact Robert Sedgley on talking.art@u3ajavea.com