Gabriele Münter - Mother with Child

When I chose Gabriele Münter as the artist for this challenge, I had not yet decided on which picture I would use as inspiration. I love her work, and I wanted the challenges to become more feminine - but when I looked at her paintings I was a bit at a loss at first. Luckily we had the chance to see an exhibition of hers in Munich earlier this year, and I bought a book of postcards. In this I found a picture that got me going.

Münter, Mother with sleeping Child, 1934, oil on carton

I decided to concentrate on a detail - and by enlarging it from a trace off the postcard I actually worked with it in a larger version than the original.

A copy-machine is a handy tool indeed...

I took a pieced piece from some earlier project that had not been used, copied the lines of the contours onto it with a single line of stitch and added a few other materials.

Then I went on vacation and had taken the piece with me because I thought I could work on my mother's sewing machine. However, while she was still gone I could not find her mending/quilting foot and quickly aborted the attempt. That, of course, threw me back in my time plan.

Working without a foot is just not a very inspirational mode of stitching.

When she returned from China, she did retrieve the foot from wherever it had been hidden and I got to work on the project for a little bit. However, I did not get as far as I had hoped, and yesterday we were traveling home. I started working on it in the evening, and a bit more today, but I am not finished.

Partly because I slept very badly last night and am very tired now I am not going to push myself and perhaps ruin the whole thing. I have revealed what I have made and will finish in the next few days, and then post a full picture of it. Apologies, Ladies. Life ...

And the next artist as inspiration is...

I have been determined to name a female artist as inspiration since I understood the principle of how we are doing it. But I keep changing my mind as to whom to choose... There are so many fabulous women making art that it is indeed very hard to decide on one single person. Only this morning I debated with myself whether I should name 'the women of the Bauhaus School', but as they are a number of women I wasn't sure whether that was allowed. Plus I wasn't sure as to how much information and literature would be available in English, although there has been quite a renaissance for them in Germany lately. Then there are so many others - Georgia O'Keeffe, of course, or Ana Mendietta. Or Nancy Holt. Or or or.
But I went back to a painter (and photographer) after all.
This is a photo of her, taken from a postcard I bought when I went to see one of her exhibitions:

This is a photo of two of her drawings as presented in a catalogue:

She was a student and then fiancée of Kandinsky who deposited a number of paintings in her basement before he went back to Russia (and returned with a different woman for a wife). These paintings then were legally pronounced hers as renumeration, and it was these paintings that were the foundation for one of Munich's famous museums, the Lenbachhaus, a must-see-address if you are interested in expressionist art. She was one of the few women members of the painter group Blaue Reiter, for a while, before she went her own way and settled in Murnau, south of Munich, in a small house that today is a museum in her name. Although there are not that many paintings on display.

Some may have recognized her by now - her name is Gabriele Münter, and I hope you will enjoy letting yourself be inspired by her work.

Cover of a catalogue