Erma Bossi: Interior with Three Figures in a Café

Interior with Three Figures in a Café, Erma Bossi, c. 1910, Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus und Kunstbau München

I came across this Italian painter while browsing the Lenbachhaus’s online collection, and I stopped, then kept coming back to her. What strikes me is this sense of stillness that comes through despite the boldness of the colours. You can sense a quiet afternoon in this richly coloured Art Nouveau café, where two figures in the foreground seem to be sharing a confidence.

Nothing is rendered with precision: everything is carried by colour, by flat passages and brushstrokes that suggest rather than depict. I love Expressionism in general, but this particular painting has something more intimate, almost whispered, that moves me every time I return to it. It already seems to carry its early signs.

We are looking at an orange wall, speckled with turquoise marks like an animal’s hide. This is the detail that catches the eye first, before the two silhouettes seated in the green half-light at the back.

What the painting tells us

Erma Bossi builds the scene in broad flat passages of pure colour, in oil on board. The orange wall and the green ceiling answer one another like two independent canvases, separated by a dark column. On the ceiling, light fixtures in decorative blue and yellow patterns echo Munich’s Art Nouveau idiom. In front, two figures lean toward one another, two glasses set between them on a round table. Near the column, a black-and-white silhouette stands almost erased by the surrounding colour. Colour alone constructs the space and the intimacy of the scene here.

What the period tells us

Munich, around 1910, is a city in artistic ferment. Erma Bossi had joined the Neue Künstlervereinigung München the year before, a group founded by Kandinsky, Münter and Jawlensky. The circle rejected academic painting in favour of simplified forms and pure colour. Women painters remained barred from the official academies, confined to private lessons. Bossi nonetheless exhibited alongside the men who would go on to dominate the movement’s history.

Erma Bossi was born in Pula in 1875. She trained at Munich’s Damenakademie, the official academies being closed to her. Rediscovered only in 2013, at the Schlossmuseum in Murnau, she remains a little-documented figure of the Blaue Reiter circle.

Erma Bossi on view in 2026

Since 10 March 2026, the Lenbachhaus has been presenting an exhibition devoted to Der Blaue Reiter, Über die Welt hinaus. Der Blaue Reiter, on view through September 2027. Erma Bossi is featured alongside Kandinsky, Franz Marc and Gabriele Münter.
Source: Lenbachhaus München