Role and influence of Marianne von Werefkin on the German avant-garde

Includes bibliographical references (pages [79]-83)The history of the evolution of German Expressionism and the movement known as Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) has been extensively studied. However, the role of women artists in the development of German Expressionism has until recently been neglected, and the significance of the expatriate Russian artist and diarist Marianne von Werefkin in this movement has largely been ignored. Von Werefkin had a reputation as an accomplished painter in Russia during the last part of the nineteenth century - she had even been called "the Russian Rembrandt" - before she left Russia in 1896 and joined the circle of Kandinsky and other Expressionist painters in Munich. By means of a close analysis of von Werefkin's diaries (published in 1960 under the title "Lettres a un Inconnu" (Letters to an Unknown), and taking into consideration the renewed scholarly interest in the female members of the Expressionist and Blue Rider movements that has become apparent since the 1980's, I propose to show that von Werefkin was more involved in and more important to the Blue Rider movement than has previously been acknowledged.M.A. (Master of Arts