Franz Marc
Born – Munich, Germany 1880
Died – Verdun, France 1916
Franz Marc began to develop his academic, naturalistic style after visiting Paris in 1903 and 1908. In 1910 he became friends with Macke, who introduced an Expressionist sense of strong colour into his work. Marc was a founding member of Der Blaue Reite group in Munich in 1911. A deeply religious man, his painting was a vehicle for his spiritual values. He chose to depict animals believing that, unlike human being, they experienced nature as a whole and were in harmony with it. In a notebook of 1911 he questioned if there could be a “more mysterious idea for the artist than how nature is reflected in the eye of an animal?” Foxes was painted in 1913, by which time Marc’s ideas about the unity and rhythm of the natural world had strengthened. In the painting there is little distinction between the foxes’ bodies and the surrounding space. The geometric grid of the fragmented picture surface also reflected Marc’s awareness of the recent developments in Cubism in Paris. His late work is almost entirely devoid of representational content. Franz Marc was killed in action in the First World War.
Masterpieces:
- Blue Horses
- Forest with Squirrel
Text: The A-Z of Art, Nicola Hodge and Libby Anson.