Gabriele Münter valuation

Gabriele Münter was born in Berlin in 1877 and, barred as a woman from the Munich academy, enrolled at the Phalanx school, where Kandinsky taught her and then lived with her for more than a decade. In 1909 she bought the house at Murnau in the Bavarian foothills that gave the circle its base, and there arrived at the manner she is known for: heavy dark contours, flat unmodulated colour, and a debt to the Bavarian folk tradition of painting on the back of glass. She was a founding member of the Blaue Reiter. The war separated her from Kandinsky permanently. Through the Nazi years she kept a large cache of the group's work hidden at Murnau, and on her eightieth birthday in 1957 gave it to the city of Munich, which is why the Lenbachhaus holds what it holds. She died in 1962.

Oils on board from the Murnau years are the centre of the market — landscapes, interiors and portraits of the circle — with drawings, reverse glass paintings and a small graphic output in woodcut and linocut alongside them. The Gabriele Münter und Johannes Eichner Stiftung in Munich holds the archive and is the authority on attribution, and works that left the estate unsigned carry its stamp. Board supports warp and split with humidity, the paint is applied thinly, and discoloured old varnish over these flat colours is disfiguring.