Styles & Periods

Die Blaue Vier

Following on the heels of Die Brücke was Der Blaue Reiter, German for “The Blue Rider.” While the Die Brücke was being recognized as the first formal group of Expressionists, Der Blaue Reiter was forming. The group can be traced to as early as 1903, when Wassily Kandinsky showed the painting of a naked blue man riding a blue horse. In 1911 Kandinsky and Franz Marc founded Der Blaue Reiter to explore their ideas of emotion-based creativity in the visual, written and musical arts. Kandinsky pushed the limits of abstraction and pioneered non-objective art by choosing other abstract ideas, such as music and feeling, as the subjects of his painting. In 1912 a show of Der Blaue Reiter was mounted and included artists Marc, Kandinsky, August Macke, Henri Rousseau, Robert Delaunay and Paul Klee. All artists had a spiritual or mystical aspect in their paintings, and all urged creative freedom of expression.