Initiation and initiative : an exploration of the life and ideas of Dimitrije Mitrinović

Chapter 2

MUNICH

Mitrinovic enrolled at the University of Munich to study the history of Art under the distinguished Swiss scholar Heinrich Wolfflin. In those prewar days the city enjoyed the reputation of being the foremost artistic centre in Europe after Paris, and attracted artists and students from many countries. Perhaps the most significant development taking place in Munich at the time of his arrival was the emergence of that school of abstract or nonrepresentational painting that was centered around Wassily Kandinsky and his associates—the Blaue Reiter Group. It was towards this circle of creative artists that Mitrinovic gravitated.

Kandinsky had arrived in Munich in 1896 from Russia and since 1908 had been living in a small village, Murnau, in Upper Bavaria with Gabrielle Minter. In 1912 he had been instrumental in organising an exhibition of paintings by new artists who came to be known as the Blaue Reiter Group. 1912 was also the year that the Blaue Reiter Almanac was published, described by Franz Marc as “an organ for all the really new ideas of our day. Painting, music, drama, etc . . .” Kandinsky’s idea had been to produce “a ‘synthesised’ book which was to eliminate old narrow ideas and tear down the walls between the arts . . . and which was to demonstrate eventually that the question of art is not a question of form but one of artistic content.”!

The views to which Mitrinovié had given expression in “Aesthetic Contemplations” placed him in full accord with such sentiments. His critique of materialism and positivism, his rejection of the idea of “art for art’s sake,” his belief in the spiritual and reformatory powers of art, and his insistence on the need to break down the barriers between the arts, all echoed the views of Kandinsky and his associates. A fact which Kandinsky acknowledged in a letter of February 17th, 1914, to Franz Marc in which he suggested that Mitrinovi¢é “can be very useful to the Blaue Reiter .. . I’ve talked a lot about it with him and he goes to the heart of things like lightning.”?

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