The Blue Lake (Der blaue See)

Depicting the rolling terrain near Murnau, Der blaue See (The Blue Lake) shows a slightly elevated view onto Lake Staffel, a frequent subject of the artist from the 1910s into the 1950s. Among Münter’s early depictions of this subject, this particular composition features saturated colors and boldly styled contour lines typical of this pivotal moment in Münter’s early development. “After a short period of agony,” she described, “I made a big leap [in Murnau], from copying nature—more or less impressionistically—to feeling its content, to abstracting, to presenting a distillation.”