It was a common tradition among academy students, as well as among members of private painting schools to leave Munich in order to paint plein-air at the foothills of the Alps. Münter and Kandinsky visited Murnau for the first time from 15 August to 30 September, 1908. Marianne von Werefkin and Alexej von Jawlensky also joined them that summer. Murnau would become Münter's home and one of her most important motifs for decades. Münter depicetd the houses in Murnau in strong abstraction and reduced to their basic architecture. This reduction, however, is contrasted by a choice of bright colors she uses for the surfaces. A strong rose competes with an intensive green, light blue stands side by side with a red brown and a rose madder in front of a lucent yellow sky. The charming landscape of the lower Alps inspired both and his partner, both try to put emotional sensation into art. In her book of memories Münter wrote the following about Murnau: "After a short but agonizing time I made great progress – from imitating nature – more or less impressionistic – to feelin content – to abstraction – to rendering an essence“ (quote after: Gudrun Schury, Ich Weltkind, Gabriele Münter: Biographie, Berlin 2012, p. 94).