That year, he worked on a series of four abstract paintings, Cheerful Forms , Playing Forms , Forms in Combat , and Broken Forms , that showcased his final move away from representational painting toward works that were completely dedicated to form. Later that year, Marc enthusiastically enlisted in the German Army as a cavalryman. Writing to Kandinsky, he said of the war, "this is the only way of cleaning out the Augean stable of Europe.
Marc himself was killed in action at the Battle of Verdun on March 4, As a leading figure in the German Expressionist movement, Marc helped redefine the nature of art. The Expressionist movement was known for of its interest in spirituality and primitivism, and its use of abstraction.
Marc incorporated his love of theology and animals into his work to create an alternate, more spiritual, vision of the world. He depicted the world as seen through the eyes of animals, who he used to highlight those aspects of modernity that he viewed unfavorably. But his later work also moved beyond representational forms into pure abstraction, leading the way for the next generation of painters.
Though his career was brief, his expressive linear forms and symbolic use of color had a lasting impact on the worlds of abstraction and expressionism. These artists were inspired by Marc's ability to generate a sense of emotion with his interest in the spiritual and the primitive, as well as his use of bright colors.
The Abstract Expressionists built upon Marc's contributions by creating paintings that emphasized more minimal, generalized forms that focused primarily on linear expression and color. These new approaches to Expressionism sought to highlight the artists' personal struggles with the changes that came after the end of World War II.
Later generations of expressionists, such as Color Field artists who took expressionism to its most minimalist, simplified state, can be viewed as descendants of Marc and his contemporaries.
Indeed, Franz Marc, as a founding member of German Expressionism, was instrumental in helping to define modernism in the 20 th century and beyond. Content compiled and written by The Art Story Contributors. Edited and revised, with Summary and Accomplishments added by Ellen Hurst. The Art Story. Ways to support us. Movements and Styles: Expressionism. Overview and Artworks. Important Art by Franz Marc. Wassily Kandinsky. Overview and Artworks Biography. Robert Delaunay.
Franz Marc. Summary Concepts Artworks. Der Blaue Reiter. The large yellow cow represents the feminine, since Marc saw the color yellow as evoking feminine emotions. The blue spots on its hide represent the masculine, since he viewed blue as evoking masculine emotions. The combination of the two colors, then, indicates a merging of masculine and feminine, in a reference to his marriage to Franck.
His repetition of color connects the animals with their background. This is most evident in the small herd of red cows grouped together at the left of the composition; they are camouflaged, blending into the rocky, red landscape around them.
Marc also uses color and line repetition with the large yellow cow. The cow dominates the foreground of the dreamlike composition, exuding a mood of blissful serenity as it leaps over the rocky landscape in the foreground.
The blue hills in the background echo the shape of the cow's haunches. The repetition of color and line throughout reverberate with a sense of energy as well as safety and happiness.
The calm, dreamlike world of The Yellow Cow , is here replaced with a restless tension. The tiger, whose bodily strength is represented with intersecting shards of color and acute angles, is tightly contained within the bold, black outline. The surrounding space is similarly electrified. Marc depicts the tiger in a moment just before attack; it is ready to break out of whatever is restraining it. There is a sense of a violent threat. The calmness and security of his earlier work is altogether absent in this work.
Marc's use of Cubist techniques allowed him to create the unmistakable feeling of tension without changing his approach to either color or subject matter. Still, his interest in the greater abstraction of the Cubists marks a distinct artistic departure.
Even during such experimentation, Marc never wavered from his interest in bold, primary colors and their potential to convey emotion. The Fate of the Animals is a vision of annihilation as seen through the eyes of the animals. The sharp angles and jagged shapes of the composition convey Marc's more jaded view of the relationship between man and nature. The image serves as a premonition of the horrors of war. Indeed, Marc shows the world being utterly ripped apart.
Fantasy is still an important feature in this work, but in this case the fantasy has turned dark and foreboding. Fires rain down from above and fallen trees jut out of the still hot embers of the underbrush. All of the animals are panicked, their faces and bodies contorted to express the terror of trying to escape their inescapable demise.
Ultimately, this is an apocalyptic vision of the looming war. Despite the chaos and destruction of the work, Marc manages to create a balanced and ordered composition. A blue deer, symbolizing hope, stands in the center foreground, twisting away from the falling tree that threatens to crush it. That Marc chose to place this symbol of hope in the center foreground of the composition, suggests that he himself had a hopeful vision of the future.
What's more, the fact that Marc borrowed from the Futurists in his painting style suggests that he had a positive view of the destruction he depicted. Since destruction was a necessary step before society could be rebuilt, this powerful image could be read as not only tragedy and decimation, but as progress.
This painting is another example of Marc's apocalyptic fears. Here, he depicts four blue horses, possibly representing the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse from the book of Revelation. The horses are stacked one above the other, on an ascending, vertical plane, eschewing depth altogether.
The stacking of the horses on top of one another also allowed Marc to repeat lines and shapes, which was a hallmark of his style. The composition is grounded by a vertical line that runs at a diagonal from the right foreleg of the horse in the foreground up to the sky, which the line separates into two distinct areas of yellow and blue.
The strong vertical line enhances the verticality of the composition, in which the horses appear to be stacked on top of one another rather than receding back into space and in which the rocky landscape at the left is similarly stacked. The lack of depth in favor of a vertical arrangement adds to the already tense mood of the painting. The 'Tiger' and its surroundings are composed of geometric shapes whose similarity suggests both the camouflage of the tiger in its natural habitat and the harmony between the creature and its environment.
Color is the main element used to separate the tiger from its background. Strong yellow and black shapes outline its form to convey the markings of the beast. The geometric shapes that make up its form are carefully proportioned and simplified to represent the tiger's features and its muscular body, while their rhythmic movement is echoed in the stylized shapes of the rocks and foliage of the background. This is indeed an idealistic view of nature - an image designed to lift its subject above the brutality of nature in the raw.
F ranz Marc painted animals as they symbolized an age of innocence, an Eden before the Fall, free from the materialism and corruption of his own time. Animals in Marc's art are metaphors for his visionary outlook. They are viewed as idealized creatures in perfect harmony with the natural world they inhabit.
Franz Marc yearned for a life on a higher spiritual plane.
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