(1911) So named because of the founders' love for horses and the color blue (and the namesake of an early painting by Kandinsky), The Blue Rider was formed in Munich mainly around Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc. Its members began to reject representational art and move towards abstraction, as they saw abstraction as a means of conceiving the natural world in terms that could surpass representation; according to Kandinsky's influential essay Concerning the Spiritual in Art, blue is the color of spirituality, and the darker the blue, the more it awakens the human desire for the eternal. In addition to Kandinsky (The Rider, Composition VI, Improvisation 28, The Cow) and Marc (Large Blue Horses, Fighting Forms, Animals in Landscape), other members of The Blue Rider include Alexej von Jawlensky (Variation), Marianne von Werefkin, August Macke (View into a Lane), and Gabriele Munter (Dorfstrasse in Blau).