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Lot Essay
For Selbstportrait mit Hut, Gabriele Münter paints herself at the age of 32 as a forthright and independent woman with expressive simplicity. Münter retained a belief in the long held view that the human form is capable of expressing the spiritual essence of the individual and was a 'natural symbol of the spiritual, non-visible world' (quoted in R. Heller, Gabriele Münter: The Years of Expressionism 1903-1920, Munich, p. 111). In her efforts to express an inner response to external impressions, Münter was aware that she was not just representing a subject when she painted, but was also projecting herself and her unconscious desires onto the canvas. For Münter, self-portraiture was a means of fusing the relationship between subject and object. 'The painting of portraits,' she explained, 'is the boldest and the most difficult, the most spiritual, the most extreme task of the artist' (ibid, p. 112).
Executed with the recently liberated sense of colour and form she had developed alongside Kandinsky and Jawlensky in Murnau in 1908, the painting is one of her most reductive self-portraits, yet still maintains a close likeness to her image. Depicting herself as if dressed up for an outing, Selbstportrait mit Hut introduces an element of caricature in her portrayal that would reoccur in the many portraits and parlour scenes she would paint of her friends from the newly formed artist's association Neue Kunstlervereinigung München.
Executed with the recently liberated sense of colour and form she had developed alongside Kandinsky and Jawlensky in Murnau in 1908, the painting is one of her most reductive self-portraits, yet still maintains a close likeness to her image. Depicting herself as if dressed up for an outing, Selbstportrait mit Hut introduces an element of caricature in her portrayal that would reoccur in the many portraits and parlour scenes she would paint of her friends from the newly formed artist's association Neue Kunstlervereinigung München.