Countryside Near Paris (Bei Paris II)

Gabriele Münter’s studies of the Parisian countryside were executed en plein air (outdoors) with overlapping strokes of wet paint, thickly applied with a palette knife, resulting in nearly abstracted images of land and sky. Of her landscape painting, Münter said, “My main difficulty was I could not paint fast enough. My pictures are all moments of life—I mean instantaneous visual experiences, generally noted very rapidly and spontaneously. When I begin to paint, it’s like leaping suddenly into deep waters, and I never know beforehand whether I will be able to swim.”