Schlossmuseum Murnau

The Schlossmuseum Murnau occupies a medieval castle at the centre of town, housing both the local history collection and the museum's primary draw: an outstanding collection of Blaue Reiter paintings and material connected to Wassily Kandinsky, Gabriele Münter, Franz Marc, and their circle. The group spent time in and around Murnau in the years before World War I, and the landscape outside the windows — the Staffelsee, the bog, the Alpine panorama — appears again and again in their work.

The Blaue Reiter section presents over 80 works by Münter alongside key pieces by Kandinsky and documentation of the almanac and exhibitions the group organised. The castle rooms themselves are atmospheric, with views over the Obermarkt. The local history section covers the area's history from prehistory through the nineteenth century and is worth a quick circuit before the art.

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A story
The Schlossmuseum holds the largest public collection of Gabriele Münter's work anywhere in the world — over 80 paintings, drawings, and reverse glass paintings. Münter is often presented as secondary to Kandinsky, with whom she worked for over a decade, but the museum makes a persuasive case that her influence ran the other way as well: it was Münter who introduced Kandinsky to the Bavarian tradition of Hinterglasmalerei (reverse glass painting), which became central to the Blaue Reiter aesthetic.

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