Franz Marc – Biography of Franz Marc

Franz Moritz Wilhelm Marc was a German painter and printmaker known for the intense mysticism of his paintings of animals. He was a founding member of Der blaue reiter (“The Blue Rider”), an association of German expressionist artists.

Born on February 8, 1880 in Munich, the first works of Marc They were painted in a naturalistic academic style, but after discovering French Impressionist painting in 1903, he took a more modern approach, using simplified lines and vivid colors. During a trip to Paris in 1907 he came across the work of the post-impressionist painter Vincent van Gogh, whose vigorous and emotional brushstrokes deeply influenced him. The effect of Van Gogh in the style of Marc is especially evident in Cats in a red cloth (1909-10).

In 1910, Marc he met the Russian-born painter Wassily Kandinsky, who was a member of a group of expressionist artists known as the Neue Künstlervereinigung (“Association of New Artists). Marc joined the group in 1911 and worked closely with another of its members, the young painter August Macke, whose idiosyncratic use of large areas of rich colors led to Marc to experiment with similar techniques.

Marc and Kandinsky parted ways with the Neue Künstlervereinigung in 1911, forming a rival group of artists called Der Blaue Reiter. Together they edited an almanac of the same name, which was published in 1912. Having always been interested in Eastern religions and philosophies, Marc he enthusiastically responded to Kandinsky’s idea that art should expose the spiritual essence of natural forms rather than copy their objective appearance. Kandinsky and Marc they developed the idea that mystical energy was best revealed through abstraction. Marc believed that civilization destroyed human consciousness of the spiritual force of nature; consequently, he habitually painted animals; he was also passionately interested in the art of “primitive” peoples, children, and the mentally ill.

The philosophy of Marc can be seen in works such as The blue horses (1911), in which the strongly simplified and rounded contours of the horses are repeated in the rhythms of the background of the landscape, uniting both animals and establishing a vigorous and harmonious organic whole. In this painting, as in the other mature works, Marc used a well-defined symbology of colors: blue, yellow and red were each used to demonstrate specific emotional qualities.

In 1912 the admiration of Marc by the works of the French painter Robert Delaunay and the Italian Futurists he made his art more and more abstract. He began to use Delaunay’s faceted spaces and brightly colored shapes to express the brutal power and fearful fragility of various forms of animal life; an example is Tyrol (1914), a work that approaches abstraction.

Marc he joined the German army in 1914; he was killed in combat two years later.