Franz Marc

1880-1916 • German • Painter • Expressionist

"Is there any more mysterious idea for an artist than the conception of how nature is mirrored in the eyes of an animal? How does a horse see the world, or an eagle, or a doe, or a dog?" - Marc

In 1911, with KANDINSKY and MUNTER, Marc was a founding member of Der BLAUE REITER. Before he was killed in action during World War I, Marc had only about five short years in which to paint in his evolving mature style, and animals, especially horses, were his most frequent subjects. He used luminescent colors, the blues, reds, greens, and yellows of STAINEDG LASS windows. From Blue Horses of 1911-in which the vigorously curving lines of beautiful blue animals are in harmony with the soft curves of the brilliantly colored hills-to the nearly ABSTRACT Fighting Forms of 1913, his colors are dazzling. Marc was absorbed with the mystery, poetry, and symbolism of color, which had been liberated from its dependence on the natural world by the FAUVEs and was being experimented with by DELAUNAY, whom Marc visited in Paris in 19 r 2. The quotation above is from Marc's Aphorisms (published 1920), in which he also expressed an ecstatic spirituality: "Only today can art be metaphysical, and it will continue to be so. Art will free itself from the needs and desires of men. We will no longer paint a forest or a horse as we please or as they may seem to us, but as they really are."