Winter Landscape, 1909 by Wassily Kandinsky

The house purchased by Gabriele Munter was also a popular meeting place for other ortists sympathetic to Kandinsky's ideals. Two fellow Russian ortists Alexei Jowlensky and his companion Marianne Werefkin were frequent visitors. Like Kondinsky, Jawlensky received some of his art training at the studio of Anton Azbe where he learnt the importance of line and color. Although his work is often seen as Germon Expressionist, it has more in common with the French art of the Fauves, particularly that of Maurice de Vlaminck. From him and indeed from the works of Vincent van Gogh, he derived the strong lines and thickly applied color synonymous with those two artists. Certainly his own Landscape with a Red RoofIs clearly indebted to Van Gogh.

Perhaps more importantly, Jowlensky also imported his 'synthetist' principles of art that he had learned from Paul Serusier with whom he had an enduring friendship. Their Theosophical ideas on the importance of the soul found a willing respondent in Kandinsky who was, at this time, seeking to mirror his own soul in his art.