About Franz Marc

Born: 1880 in München
Died: 1916 near Verdun

Franz Marc was born in Munich on 8 February 1880. After graduating from high school, he initially enrolled to study philosophy at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, which he was not to take up due to a year of basic training in the military, during which Marc learned to ride a horse. Immediately afterwards he transferred to the Munich Art Academy, where his father had studied painting before him. In the years that followed, it was above all the French Impressionists, whose works he first encountered during a trip to Paris in 1903, who were to change Marc's style decisively. On another trip to Paris in 1907, the artist came under the influence of Paul Cezanne, Paul Gauguin and Vincent van Gogh, for whom he was exceptionally enthusiastic. From then on, he painted landscape motifs and depictions of animal anatomies, and animals were now among his main motifs at this time. His search for a suitable style led him to ever greater simplifications of form, and colour became an important means of expression. In 1910 he met August Macke, and during a visit to an exhibition of the "Neue Künstlervereinigung" he met Wassily Kandinsky, Alexej von Jawlensky and Gabriele Münter. Marc's style changed to an expressive, strong colourfulness, neglecting the representational more and more. In December 1911, the first exhibition of the editorial team "Der Blaue Reiter", of which Marc was a member, opened at the Galerie Thannhauser in Munich. Franz Marc's prominent pictures "Die Gelbe Kuh", "Hocken im Schnee" and others are created. In 1912 Marc publishes the artist almanac "Der Blaue Reiter" together with Kandinsky. At this time he travels to Paris with Macke, where they meet Robert Delaunay. Under Delaunay's influence and that of the Italian Futurists, he develops strong Cubist and Cubofuturist references in his works. In 1914 Marc moved to Ried near Benediktbeuern. There he painted his last large paintings, which had a symbolic, supra-temporal quality, such as "Rehe im Wald II" (Deer in the Forest II). Marc freed himself from naturalism, the forms slowly dissolved, and the design developed a dynamic of its own. On 4 March 1916 Franz Marc was killed in action near Verdun, hit by a shell.