(Berlin 1877–1962 Murnau/Upper Bavaria) Winter in Elmau, signed and dated Münter 33, verso signed and dated again, Gabriele Münter 1933, numbered by the artist: 4/33, oil on plywood, 32.5 x 44 cm, framed, (PS)

Provenance: Galerie Ludorff, Düsseldorf
Private Collection North Rhine-Westphalia

Photo certificate: Prof Helmut Friedel, Lenbachhaus Munich, 20 August 2013

In the artist’s diary is noticed under the number 4/33: Elmau 2 I 1933 – mountain scene in front of the castle – by nature When Gabriele Münter went back to Murnau in 1931 to settle there permanently, she also returned to the forms discovered during her pioneering period before the First World War. The simple, clear structure of her work, divided into a limited number of synthetic planes, is typical of her early work, as it is of her oeuvre after 1930. In her representations of the landscape of the Alpine foothills, Gabriele Münter is concerned with precise appearances. The painting, ‘Elmau im Winter’ is one of the images of winter within the artist’s oeuvre, which captures the late winter atmosphere in a very particular way. The snow-capped mountain ridges of the Wetterstein mountain range in the background are drawn with dark contours, whilst the dark mountain forest in the middle ground and the snowy, sunlit Alpine pastures in the foreground exhibit very little detail. The pathway, already thawed, leads off between the shaded area of snow to the left and the gleaming field of snow, thawing in the sunlight, to the right, which draws the viewer’s gaze towards Schloss Elmau in the middle ground.