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EXPRESSIONIST PAINTERS
German and Austrian
expressionist painters
include:
Alexei von Jawlensky (1864-1941)
Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944)
Emile Nolde (1867-1956)
Gabriele Munter (1877-1962)
Paul Klee (1879-1940)
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880-1938)
Alexander Kanoldt (1881-1939)
Max Pechstein (1881-1955)
Erich Heckel (1883-1970)
Max Beckmann (1884-1950)
Karl Schmidt-Rottluff (1884-1976)
Oskar Kokoschka (1886-1980)
August Macke (1887-1914)
Egon Schiele (1890-1918)
Georg Scholz (1890-1945)
Rudolph Schlichter (1890-1955)
Otto Dix (1891-1969)
Anton Raderscheidt (1892-1970)
George Grosz (1893-1959)
Christian Schad (1894-1982)
Heinrich Davringhausen (1894-1970)
Conrad Felixmuller (1897-1977)
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Blue Rider Artists & Movement
The Blue Rider organised their first exhibition in 1911 and 1912 in Munich
at the Thannhauser Galleries which went on to tour around Germany. The
group expanded to include Marianne von Werefkin, Gabriele Munter, Lyonel
Feininger, Paul Klee, Alexei von Jawlensky,
Alfred Kubin and Albert Bloch. Other artists also joined the exhibitions,
invited by Marc because he believed their works represented true art.
These artists included Henri Rousseau, Picasso and Robert Delaunay. The
Blue Rider Almanac was published in 1912: 1,100 copies were printed.
The volume was edited by Marc and Kandinsky and contained reproductions
of 140 paintings and 14 major theoretical art discussions. In 1913, they
exhibited at the first German Herbstsalon. Although the artists
within the group varied in their approach to style, they shared a common
desire to portray spirituality in their art. They believed in the progression
of modern art, the connection between visual arts and music, and the symbolic
and spiritual association of colour. Members of the Blue Rider Group were
also interested in primitivism and European medieval art, as well as non-figurative,
contemporary art. Many of the members of the group, encountering the work
of the Fauvists, Rayonists and Cubists, graduated towards abstraction.
The outbreak of World War I led to an abrupt end of the Blue Rider Group,
when many of its members either volunteered or were conscripted to join
the army.
Meeting with Robert Delaunay
In 1912, Marc's personal style developed when he met Robert
Delaunay. Delaunay's use of colour and interest in Futurism
inspired Marc. The latter's style increasingly began to focus on animals
in landscape - their innocence he claimed gave him access to truths denied
to the human race. In their fate he saw a symbol of an apocalyptic fate
confronting mankind. In one work, Fighting Form (1914, Staatsgalerie
Moderner Kunst, Munich), his work had developed into near abstraction,
and he seemed to prophesy the war in which he lost his life. He strove
to capture the 'mystical inner construction' of animals in his paintings,
comparing his works to El Greco and Paul Cezanne. The geometric forms
seen in his later work also show influences of Cubism, Futurism and Orphism.
The Horse
Marc made over 60 prints in woodcut and
lithography and many gouache
paintings. His work is characterised by bright primary colours, simplicity
of form and almost Cubist portrayal of animals. In his 1910 painting Leaping
Horses (Springende Pferde), Marc wrote of his aims 'What seems
so promising in the new work being done by the Neueknstervereinigung
is the utterly spiritualized and dematerialized inwardness of feeling
which our fathers... never even attempted to explore in a picture'. For
Marc the horse was an animal that had been celebrated since Roman days,
and into the 18th/19th centuries by famous artists including George
Stubbs, Gericault, Delacroix, Degas and von Maree. The horse was a
powerful symbol of grace, energy and power of nature. He attempted to
separate elements of picture-making - that of form, rhythm, implied movement
and colour - into a harmony in relation to the spirit and nature of its
subject matter. Leaping Horses is unique among his horse works
in that it attempts to apply Pointillist or Divisionist techniques. He
unifies animals and landscape, colour and form with an under current of
abstraction. Like the later works of the Futurist painter Giacomo Balla's
Flights of Swallows, Marc sought to evoke the underlying, hidden
abstract patterns, rhythms and laws of Nature. As Marc wrote: 'Nature
is lawless because it is an eternal chain of coming and going... I write
as if I already know something about these... laws which I have dreamt
about! But I am searching with the entire longing of my soul and with
all my strength after them and I have a slight idea that they are already
in my paintings'. Ultimately he turned to abstract
art in order to express the universal synthesis he believed existed
in nature. Leaping Horses, with its block like marks of pure colour
is similar to pictures by the Neo-Impressionist Paul
Signac.
Tragically, Marc's life was cut short at the age of 36, in the catastrophe
of Verdun - a battle in which 7,000 horses were killed in a single day.
His works did not go unnoticed during the Nazi regime when he was denounced
during the Nazi degenerate
art campaign, and 130 of his works were removed from German art museums.
He remains one of the most important of German Expressionist painters.
Famous Paintings By Franz Marc
These include:
- Leaping Horses (Springende
Pferde, 1910, private collection)
- Dog Lying in the Snow (1910-11, Stadelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt)
- Red Horses (1911, private collection)
- The Yellow Cow (1911, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York)
- The Large Blue Horses (1911, Walker Art Centre, Minneapolis)
- Deer in the Woods II (1912, Stadtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus,
Munich)
- Tiger (1912, Stadtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus)
- Little Blue Horse (1912, The Saarland Museum, Saarbrucken)
- The Fate of the Animals (1913, Kunstmuseum, Basle)
- Foxes (1913, Kunstmuseum, Dusseldorf)
- The Lamb (1913-14, Museum Boymans-van-Beuningen, Rotterdam)
- Fighting Forms (1914, Staatsgalerie Moderner Kunst, Munich)
Museum Collections
The Franz Marc Museum in Kochel am See,
Germany, is a major centre for works by Marc. In addition, his pictures
can be seen in a number of the best art museums in America, including:
- Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
- Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas
- Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
- Museum of Modern Art, New York City
- National Gallery of Art, Washington
- Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, California
- San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
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