GERMANY – Cover from Ruhr, Germany to Braga, Portugal

Cover with the ‘Der Blaue Reiter’ stamp and special postmark, posted on February 9, 2012.

(A very special thanks to my friend Igor Adolph)

"The Blue Rider" is the name of a group artist Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944) and Franz Marc (1880-1916). The name comes from the Kandinsky and Marc in the summer of 1911 and 1912 planned published in Munich almanac "Der Blaue Reiter" back.

"The Blue Rider" is the idealistic - romantic, spiritual flow of German Expressionism, as a counterpoint to the more realistic direction in Dresden and Berlin ("The Bridge"). At the legendary exhibitions attended major German and French artists. Including Robert Delaunay, whose Orphism the Munich painter strongly influenced. The artists rejected the Salon painting. The growing alienation of nature should be taken up by a "deeper view" of things. An example of the expressionist works of the artists in this group is the image "Blue Horse" by Franz Marc in 1911. He also designed a new color theory for its time, especially those influenced many other works. Blue is in the sense of Kandinsky "color language", the color of the spirit.

In addition to increasing disagreement in the group of artists put the events at the beginning of World War I to the work of the "Blue Rider" in 1914 to an end. Kandinsky had to go back to Russia, while Marc was in France 1916.

The influences of these artists grouping remained. For example, Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky taught after his return from Russia in the early 1920s at the Bauhaus in Weimar and Dessau. Alluding to the "Blue Rider" in 1924 in Weimar, with the participation of Kandinsky, Klee and Alexej von Jawlensky, Lyonel Feininger and the German-American gallery owner and art lover Galka Scheyer an exhibition group called was founded "The Blue Four". By Galka Scheyers these were known in America and opened the way of important art collections. In the era of National Socialism lost the locations of the German avant-garde art its meaning. The Bauhaus was closed, the works of expressionist and abstract art as "degenerate" banned and removed from the public art collections. Many works of the artists of the "Blue Rider" were saved from destruction and sold abroad. The Germans could only pictures of the group again in 1949, seen in the Haus der Kunst. Kandinsky was a life-long committed art. The flight from those who did not understand his art, and constant new beginning, dominated his life. In 1944, in his presence was the last exhibition of his work held at the Galerie l'Esquisse.

Technical Details

100 Jahre Die Blaue Reiter (100 Years of The Blue Rider)

Date of Issue: February 9, 2012

Values: one stamp of 1,45€

Designer: Nina Clausing, Wuppertal

Motif: „Blaues Pferd I“ © Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus und Kunstbau, München

Printer: Bundesdruckerei GmbH, Berlin

Process: Multi-color offset printing

Size: 35 x 35 mm

Perforation:

Paper: Coated, white and fluorescent stamps Paper DP II

Watermark:

Sheet: booklets with 10 stamps