Background
Franz Marc was born on February 8, 1880, in Munich, Bavaria, German Empire (present-day Munich, Germany). He was the son of Wilhelm Marc, a landscape painter, and Sophie Marc, a homemaker.
Akademiestraße 2-4, 80799 München, Germany
From 1900 to 1902, Franz studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich.
Akademiestraße 2-4, 80799 München, Germany
From 1900 to 1902, Franz studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich.
Franz Marc was born on February 8, 1880, in Munich, Bavaria, German Empire (present-day Munich, Germany). He was the son of Wilhelm Marc, a landscape painter, and Sophie Marc, a homemaker.
Franz began his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich in 1900 and was taught by several influential teachers at the time, including Gabriel von Hackl and Wilhelm von Diez.
Marc made his first trip to Paris in 1903, where he came into contact with impressionism. He had originally intended to become a theologian and later Franz carried his religious inclinations into his pictorial investigations, treating the shapes of nature as images, filled with secret meaning. He used certain cubist formal elements to imbue his art with a kind of mystical constructivism. The animal images are the expression of his deep union with all creation.
In 1907, Marc revisited Paris, where the paintings of Vincent Van Gogh made a deep impression on him. He prepared the almanac "Der Blaue Reiter" together with Wassily Kandinsky in 1909. Marc discovered the great possibilities of color as a means of expression in 1910 through August Macke, who was fascinated by the Fauves. The same year, Marc moved to Sindelsdorf, where he had his first exhibition. When, in 1911, Kandinsky's Neue Künstlervereinigung (New Artists' Federation) broke up, Marc, Kandinsky, Alfred Kubin and Gabriele Münter exhibited on December 18 in the Galerie Tannhauser as the Blaue Reiter group. This show marks one of the most important dates of the German modern movement.
From then on Marc went his own way, deepening his vision into a kind of nature symbolism. Even his colors were conceived in a symbolic manner. In the series of animal paintings of 1911, of which "Red Horses" is the best known, Marc detached color from nature and gave it a radiant independent life.
In 1911, Franz Marc founded the Blue Rider Journal. In 1912, he met Robert Delaunay, whose Orphism was an important source of inspiration to Marc. His large animal compositions of 1912-1913, such as "Tower of the Blue Horses" and "Animal Destinies", radiate great power. "Tirol" (1913-1914) offers a complex dynamics, in which landscape and light, planes and lines interact. In 1914, Marc took a step toward emotional abstractionism in paintings with titles, such as "Serene", "Playful" and "Struggling".
Marc entered the army, when World War I broke out. He stopped painting, but he kept a sketchbook, in which he depicted problems of growth, such as "Plant Life Coming into Being" and "Arsenal for Creation". After mobilization of the German Army, the government identified notable artists to be withdrawn from combat for their own safety. Marc was on the list, but was struck in the head and killed instantly by a shell splinter during the Battle of Verdun in 1916 before orders for reassignment could reach him.
Franz Marc was a leading figure in the German Expressionist movement, who helped redefine the nature of art. His most notable works include "Fate of the Animals", "The Tower of Blue Horses", "The Yellow Cow" and "Blue Horses".
It's worth noting, that the painter co-founded Blue Rider, an influential avant-garde art group.
In addition, several of Marc's paintings garnered record prices at Christie's art auction house in London in October 1998, including "Rote Rehe I" (Red Deer I), which sold for $3.30 m. His "Der Wasserfall" (The Waterfall) was sold by Sotheby's in London to a private collector for $5.06 m. This price set a record for both Franz Marc's work and twentieth-century German painting.
Deer at Dusk
Deer in the Forest II
The Shepherdness
Coloful Flowers (Abstract Forms)
Three Horses
Head of the Horse
The Red Deer
The Wolves (Balkan War)
Mandrill
The Waterfall
Deer in the Snow
Fate of the Animals
Donkey Frieze
Dead Deer
Little Yellow Horses
Indersdorf
Large Lenggries Horses
Blue Horse I
Fighting Forms
Playing Weasels
Birds
St. Julian the Hospitaller
Woman in the Wind by the Sea
A Dog
Mountain Goats
The Tower of Blue Horses
Red and Blue Horse
The Monkey
Playing Dogs
Portrait of the Artist's Mother
Small Horse Picture
The Unfortunte Land of Tyrol
The Dream
Blue Fox
Monkey Frieze
Animals in a Landscape
The Large Blue Horses
Two Horses, Red and Blue
Siberian Sheepdogs
Jumping Dog Schlick
Horse and Dog
Larch Sapling
The Lamb
Small Composition II
Village Street
Small Composition III
Picture with Cattle
Two Cats
Nude Lying In The Flowers
Resting Horses
Horse in a Landscape
The Steer (The Bull)
Stables
Weasels Playing
Resting Cows
Sleeping Deer
Elephant
Two Women on the Hillside
Red Deer
In the Rain
Pigs
Girl with Cat II
Wild Pigs (Boar and Sow)
Horse Asleep
Little Blue Horse
Deer in the Forest
Tiger
Dog Lying in the Snow
Grazing Horses
Gazelles
Caliban (from Shakespeare's The Tempest)
Cows, Yellow-Red-Green
Two Horses
Woodcutter
The Dead Sparrow
Fabulous Beast II
Animal Legend
Haystacks in the Snow
Small Horse Study
Two Bathing Girls
The Yellow Cow
Self-Portrait
Seated Mythical Animal
Sleeping Animals
The Little Blue Horses
The Fox
Deer in the Forest II
Two Horses
Tiger
Cats
Young Boy with a Lamb
Mountains (Rocky Way Landscape)
Crouching Deer
Lion Hunt (after Delacroix)
Small Composition I
Nude with Cat
Sheaf of Grain
Two Blue Horses in Front of a Red Roc
The First Animals
Three Cats
The Birth of the Horse
Two Cats, Blue and Yellow
Long Yellow Horse
Grazing Horses IV (The Red Horses)
Riding School
Broken Forms
The Enchanted Mill
Sleeping Shepherdness
Bathing Girls
Shepherds
Four Foxes
Two Blue Horses
Tyrol
Fairy Animals
Deer in a Monastery Garden
Cottages on the Dachau Marsh
Quotations:
"We are staunch and true and in rather a champagne mood."
"Art has always been and is in its very essence the boldest departure from nature. It is the bridge into the spirit world."
"Blue is the male principle, stern and spiritual. Yellow the female principle, gentle, cheerful and sensual. Red is matter, brutal and heavy and always the colour, which must be fought and vanquished by the other two."
"Is there a more mysterious idea, than to imagine how nature is reflected in the eyes of animals?"
"The great artists do not seek their forms in the midst of the past, but take the deepest soundings they can of the genuine, profoundest of their age."
Marc was involved in a number of stormy relationships during his twenties, including an affair, lasting for many years with Annette Von Eckardt, a married antique dealer. He was married twice: Marie Schnür was his first wife and Maria Franck was his second wife. Both of them were artists.
Wilhelm Marc was a German landscape painter.
Sophie Marc was a German homemaker.
Maria Franck was a German artist.
Marie Schnür was a German painter, illustrator and silhouette maker.
August Macke was a German painter, who represented Expressionism art movement.
