Fall Landscape, Study (Yellow Trees) (Herbstlandschaft, Studie [Gelbe Bäume])

In this landscape painting Gabrielle Münter—a member of the Blue Rider (Der Blaue Reiter) group of Expressionists active in Munich—has moved away from her early Impressionistic style, in which she had employed a palette knife and unmixed colors in order to create atmospheric effects in her landscape paintings. This shift was in part inspired by her encounter with a traditional Bavarian folk art form called Hinterglasbilder or Reverse Glass Pictures, which often depicted landscapes and village scenes utilizing simplified forms and bold, bright colors. The vibrant yellow treetops are formed with a dark outline, as are the triangular Blue Mountains set off against the hillside, blocking the viewer’s gaze from penetrating into the distance. She has largely flattened perspectival space to stress the interlocking arrangement of flat colored shapes.

Yet, despite the landscape consisting of abstracted forms and heightened colors, Yellow Road is still, very much, a discernable landscape scene—a wide footpath near Münter's house in the Bavarian market town of Murnau.