Gabriele Münter, daughter of German-American emigrants and partner of the Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky, is an early and outstanding example of a self-determined and open-minded artist. In her home in Murnau, she provided a haven for the Blue Rider and pursued her own artistic path in Expressionism despite all the resistance from the art market. She was celebrated, forgotten, and rediscovered. Boris von Brauchitsch describes the social conditions for a female artist's career around 1900 in a compact and nuanced way, detailing Münter's creative self-assertion alongside Kandinsky, the intrigues of her fellow artists, the emotional highs and lows, as well as the loneliness she repeatedly countered with works that express both vitality and melancholy.