Der Blaue Reiter

1
Der Blaue Reiter

• Wassily Kandinsky
• Franz Marc

2
Der Blaue Reiter

• In1909 a group of Munich-based artists announced
  their common aim of organising art exhibitions
  in Germany and abroad, and of reinforcing their
  effect by lectures, publications and similar
  means.
• They were known as Die Neue Kunstlervereinigung
  München (New Artists Alliance, Munich) or NKVM.
  Founding members included Alexij von Jawlensky,
  Alexander Kanoldt, Adolf Erbsloh, Marianne
  Werefkin, Wassily Kandinsky and Gabriele Munter.
• The NKVM hosted three major shows. The first
  featured the founding members, the second
  included French and Russian artists (including
  Picasso, Braque, Derain, Vlaminck, and two future
  Blaue Reiter artists Macke and Marc).
• There came a rift in the NKVM when in their
  third show they rejected an art work by Kandinsky
  because of the jury deemed it too large for the
  show. Many members argued that it should be
  admitted, but in the end it was not.
• Kandinsky left the NKVM and in 1911 they held
  their first exhibition (members included
  Kandinsky, Marc, and Munter). Interestingly, Die
  Brucke artists had left the New Artists Session
  in Berlin around the same time.

3
Der Blaue Reiter - Whats with the name?

• Some argue that the name was taken from a
  Kandinsky work done in 1905 titled Blue Horseman.
  The horse rider had been inspired by Russian
  folk tales.
• On the first Blaue Reiter Almanac is an image of
  St. George atop a horse slaying a dragon in the
  forground. It is thought that St. George was
  used as a symbol of the artists spiritual role of
  rescuing innocence from the ravages of
  materialism.
• The horse rider was an allusion to the Four
  Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Der Blaue Reiter
  artists, especially under the influence of
  Theosophy, saw an apocalypse as the only way that
  a new, non-materialistic epoch will be reached.
  This was in reaction to the decadent bourgeois
  culture that was corrupted because of industrial
  change and exploitation.
• Lastly, the horse was seen to be a potent symbol
  of elemental forces by both Kandinsky and Marc.

4
Der Blaue Reiter and philosophical influences.
Theosophy - Drawing from philosophical and
religious backgrounds (Hinduism, Judaism,
Zoroastrianism), it was established by the
Russian Madame Blavatsky in 1875. They believed
in the idea of universal brotherhood the idea
that colour and form can enrich the soul that
people have colour auras (thought forms) that
change colour according to peoples mood that an
apocalypse will bring about a final spiritual
world and that the 21st century will be a time
of paradise on earth.
Psychology - Synaesthesia a belief that some
people have the ability to see colours when they
hear a particular sound/music. Kandinsky wrote,
Various attempts to exploit this power of colour
and apply it to different nervous disordersred
light has an enlivening and stimulating affect.
Freud his theories on automatic drawing, or to
create from the unconscious rather than conscious
part of the mind as a way of tapping into a
universal understanding.
5
Der Blaue Reiter and philosophical influences.
Darwinism - Der Blaue Reiter artists like
Kandinsky and Marc used animals as symbols in
their works at they saw them as existing in
balance with naturethis aligned well with their
interest in spirituality. Kandinsky used the
horse as a symbol of power and passion whereas
Marc used animals to represent truth, purity, and
beauty.
The Apocalypse - For Kandinsky, this was going to
bring about a necessary change and bring forth a
new, non-material world. Many had seen science
as something that was advancing too quickly and
bringing too many changes and creating a corrupt
and unbalanced world. Kandinsky wrote, The
collapse of the atom was equatedwith the
collapse of the whole world. Many artists and
liberal thinkers believed that the world was soon
to collapse on itself. Such people included
Kandinsky, Neitzsche, and Wagner. Der Blaue
Reiter saw their task as prophesising this
apocalypse.
6
Wassily Kandinsky (1866 1944)

• In 1896 (30) he gave up his successful careeer as
  a lawyer (Phd) and economist to become a painter.
  He moved to Munich to study art.
• One of few expressionists in Germany whose work
  was based on a comprehensive and well founded
  theory. In 1912 he wrote one of Arts most
  influential texts On the Spiritual in Art.
• His style changed and grew from Art Nouveau
  (Jugendstil), Russian symbolist, Fauvism,
  Post-Impressionism and eventually abstraction.
• By 1909 his works, while still containing ciphers
  (abbreviated symbols of natural objects), his use
  of colour becomes much more expressive and
  non-representational.
• Works take on unconventional titles and start
  with Impression, Improvisation, or Composition.
• 1911 an important year, it is thought that this
  was the year that he painted his first true
  abstract oil painting.
• 1913 space or movement is created by weight, the
  advancing or receding, of colour.
• 1914 is forced to leave Germany, though he
  returns in 1922 to teach at the Bauhaus.

7
Riding Couple, 1906-07, oil on canvas,
8
Colourful Life. 1907 oil on canvas.
9

• Kandinskys early work (1896-1908)
• A Divisionist technique, using unmixed colours in
  juxtaposition (similar to Pointalism, some
  scholars will refer to this application of paint
  as Tesserae).
• Not strictly systematic.
• His themes are mingled with his rural Russian
  background and its fairy tales. The style
  alludes to Russian folk art with the use of
  bright colours against a dark background.
• Art Nouveau influence can be seen.
• Landscapes based more on psychological symbolism
  than on-site studies of nature.
• Short vivid brushstrokes give a vibrant, luminous
  quality.

10
Claude Monet Haystacks
Kandinsky was deeply impressed with Monets
haystacks. In was around 1905 that he went to a
French Impressionist exhibition in Moscow.
Kandinsky wrote The catalogue told me that it
was a haystack I couldnt tell it from looking.
Not being able to to tell it upset me. I also
considered that the artist had no right to paint
so indistinctlyI had the dull sensation that the
subject was missing. And was amazed and confused
to realize that the picture did not merely fascin
ate but impressed itself indelibly on my memory.
11
Wassily Kandinsky - Munich-Schwabing with the
Church of St. Ursula. 1908. Oil on cardboard.
68.8 x 49 cm.
12
Wasily Kandinsky, Blue Mountain, 190809. Oil on
canvas, 41x38 inches.
13

• Kandinsky work -1908-1909.
• Silhouetted flatness of form.
• Influence of Fauves as during this period
  Kandinsky had travelled to Paris and met Matisse,
  Derain, and Vlaminck as well as Picasso and
  Braque. He was impressed by the Fauves arbitrary
  use of colour and the Expression that they
  captured in their work.
• Often sharp contrast of light and dark and warm
  and cold.
• Alternations between different coloured dabs and
  blobs of paint give the paintings a restless
  quality.

14

• Kandinskys Metamorphosis - 1909-1911
• In Germany, Kandinsky developed his idea of the
  correspondence between a work of Art and the
  viewer, and called it Klang (sound or
  resonance).
• In his book Spirituality in Art he wrote
• Colour is the power which directly influences
  the soul. Colour is the keyboard, the eyes are
  the hammers, the soul is the piano with the
  strings. The Artist is the hand which plays,
  touching one key or another, to cause vibrations
  of the soul.

15

• Metamorphosis 1909-1911.
• In this period of artistic development, he began
  to divide his paintings into 3 categories
• Impressions which still show some
  representational elements.
• Improvisations which convey spontaneous emotion
  reactions.
• Compositions which are ultimate works of art,
  created only after a long period of preparations
  and preliminaries.

16
Kandinsky, Mountain, 1909, Oil on canvas,
109x109cm.
17
Mountain, 1909
Blue Mountain, 190809
Looking at these two works what stylistic
features have changed? List three similarities
and three differences.
18
Wassily Kandinsky. Picture with an Archer. 1909.
Oil on canvas, 175 x 144 cm .
19
Picture with an Archer. 1909
Church of St. Ursula, 1908
Looking at these two works what stylistic
features have changed? List three similarities
and three differences.
20
Wassily Kandinsky -Improvisation 6 (African),
1909. Oil on canvas. 109 x99 cm.
21
Wassily Kandinsky, Two Riders and Reclining
Figure, 1909-10.
22
Improvisation 7 1910, Oil on canvas, 131 x 97
cm.
23

• Kandinskys work -1909-1910.
• Landscape is still the basis of the subject
  matter though elements are only hinted at as if
  they are a mere pretext for a colourful play of
  glowing contrasts.
• Shapes are reduced.
• Loose thick areas of colour are spread broadly
  and generously.
• Non-Naturalistic.

24
Wassily Kandinsky
Picasso
Matisse
Cubism had demonstrated a means to be liberated
from traditional representation of form.
Had seen that colour didnt have to signify
objects. .has its own spiritual significance.
25

• Synaesthesia
• (K.) Had a neurological disorder known as
  synaesthesia.
• Defined as sensory stimulation that is perceived
  by a separate sense.
• Kandinsky exhibited the most common form known as
  coloured hearing. This means that he could hear
  music when he saw colours each colour has its
  musical equivalent.
• Each indiv. Would hear different musical tones on
  seeing different colours.
• Example When he saw the colour yellow in which
  he reported hearing the sound of a shrill
  trumpet.
• He wrote of this in his theoretical texts. He
  stated that when you see a bright colour you do
  not associate deep bass sound with it, and
  likewise upon seeing a dark colour a high treble
  sound.

26
Kandinsky, "First Abstract Watercolour"1910.
Pencil, watercolour and India ink, 49.6 x 64.8 cm.
27

• Breakthrough to the abstract 1910/11-1913
• The lopsided painting, scholars are in debate
  as to whether this is the first true abstract art
  work.
• Brings in connections between art and music where
  he saw musics free chords and harmonic tones as
  an analogy for abstract art.
• Early abstract forms still bound in some way to
  nature ie. werent just shapes and colour for
  their own sake.

28
Kandinsky, Improvisation 19, 1911. Oil on canvas,
120x141cm.
29
Kandinsky, Improvisation 19, 1911. Oil on canvas,
120x141cm.

• The black outlines still suggest the figurative,
  but there is absolutely no connection between
  them and the vibrant field of colour which they
  frame.

30
Wassily Kandinsky - Lyrical. 1911. Oil on canvas.
94 x 130 cm.
31
Composition ll. 1909-1910
32
Cossacks  1910-11
33
Cossacks  1910-11

• Is this work devoid of anything representational?
• The title of the work suggests that he is
  remembering the events of the 1905 Russian
  Revolution in which the Cossacks were involved.
• The view is expected to read the painting in
  three levels
• To see the chaos of colour and lines to represent
  the chaos of the Revolution
• To begin to see the forms created by colours and
  lines (eg. the hats of the Cossack soldiers,
  their lances, the castle sitting atop the hill)
• To begin to understand the meaning of the work as
  it was his hope that the viewers would be drawn
  into a conversation with the painting while they
  try to decipher is.

34
Composition IV, 1911, Oil on canvas, 159 x 250 cm
35
Composition IV, 1911, Oil on canvas, 159 x 250 cm

• On the left, violent motion is expressed through
  the profusion of sharp, jagged and entangled
  lines.
• On the right, all is calm, with sweeping forms
  and colour harmonies.
• Cossacks (1910-11) is considered to be the
  preparatory study work for this art work.
• The dividing lines are actually two lances held
  by red-hatted Cossacks. Next to them, a third,
  white-bearded Cossack leans on his violet sword.
• They stand before a blue mountain crowned by a
  castle. In the lower left, two boats are
  depicted.
• Above them, two mounted Cossacks are joined in
  battle, brandishing violet sabers. On the lower
  right, two lovers recline, while above them two
  robed figures observe from the hillside.
• Kandinsky has reduced representation to
  pictographic signs in order to obtain the
  flexibility to express a higher, more cosmic
  vision.

36
Kandinsky, Composition V (The last judgement),
1911, Oil on Canvas, 200x300cm.
37
Later in 1911, Kandinsky produced Composition V,
a much more abstract work. Several angels
blowing trumpets are included in the upper
portion of the canvas. The strong black line
crossing from right to left can be felt as a
representation of the blowing of the trumpets.
Above this line, the towers of a walled-in city
are visible. Below the line, the thin application
of paint produces a luminescence that affects our
perception of space in that portion of the
canvas. The whiteness conveys a sense of
infinity through the lack of volume and
perspective. Out of this void, the viewer can
sense the rising of the dead.
38
Kandinskys Colour Theory.

• Kandinsky felt that each colour had an inherent
  character defined by its relationship to its
  opposing colour. For instance -plus/minus,
  warm/cool, active/passive, female/male and
  believed that these characteristics, on an
  intuitive level and in certain combinations,
  could communicate an emotion or idea to the
  spectator.
• Kandinskys colour principles
• Yellow Warm, Convulsive, irritating.
• Blue Tranquil, Severe, Cold.
• Red Hot, Passionate, Virile.
• Green Static, Neutral, Passive.
• White A silence pregnant with sound.
• Black Silence of death.

39
Kandinskys Colour Theory.
Yellow
Orange
Green
Black
White
Violet
Red
Blue
40
Kandinsky, Improvisation 26 (Oars), 1912, Oil on
Canvas, 97x107cm
41
Kandinsky, Picture with a Black Arch, 1912. Oil
on canvas, 188x196 cm.
42
Kandinsky, Picture with a Black Arch, 1912. Oil
on canvas, 188x196 cm.

• Made up of 3 areas of shapes pressing against
  each other.
• Bottom right corner shape leads to Vermillion at
  centre, opposite a blue shape that has dark lines
  with light greens, whites and orange.
• Black Arch shape gives weight to the image. Binds
  them together.
• Black Arch appears as an eruption of energy,
  violent struggle. Red1side. Blue the other.
• Theme of conflict and struggle.

43

• Conflict
• An aim to capture the turmoil of inner life as
  captured in the conflict of the Music of Mozart
  or Wagner.
• -evident in the contrast of the red and Blue in
  Black Arch.
• Colour, line and free flowing form to make up a
  dramatic visual language which expresses the
  antagonism between matter and spirit.
• Translates the entire sceptical mood of pre WW1
  Europe into an abstract but accessible range of
  symbols.

44
Kandinsky, Picture with white border, 1913. Oil
on canvas, 140x200cm
45
Kandinsky, Picture with white border, 1913.

• Washed out blue figure in middle fighting
  figure.
• White line lance directed at a dragon in lower
  left.

46
Kandinsky, Composition VI, 1913, Oil on canvas,
195x300cm.
47

• Kandinsky saw three centres to this Composition
• First) The eye is drawn to the pink and white
  vortex in the left centre.
• Second) The multiple lines representing
  torrential rain carry the focus to the right
  section, where a darker centre of discordant
  forms and stronger rain lines adds to the tumult.
  
• Third) The eye slides to the lower centre, where
  a blue form outlined in black cowers below the
  torrents of rain and crashing waves. In this
  work, Kandinsky has pushed further beyond
  representation to the very limits of abstraction.

48
Composition VII. 1913
49
Composition VII is the pinnacle of Kandinsky's
pre-World War One artistic achievement. Its
creation involved over thirty preparatory
drawings, watercolours and oil studies. Through
all of the preparatory works and in the final
painting itself, the central motif (an oval form
intersected by an irregular rectangle) is
maintained. This oval seems almost the eye of a
compositional hurricane, surrounded by swirling
masses of colour and form. In Composition VII's
final form, Kandinsky has obliterated almost all
pictorial representation. Art scholars, through
Kandinsky's writings and study of the less
abstract preparatory works, have determined that
Composition VII combines the themes of The
Resurrection, The Last Judgment, The Deluge and
The Garden of Love in an operatic outburst of
pure painting.
Kandinsky, Composition VII, 1913, Oil on Canvas,
200x300cm.
50
Kandinsky, Composition VIII, 1923
51
Kandinsky, Composition VIII, 1923

• Apocalyptic emotion of Composition VII replaced
  with geometrical rhythm.
• Painted ten years later in 1923, Composition VIII
  reflects the influence of Suprematism and
  Constructivism absorbed by Kandinsky while in
  Russia prior to his return to Germany to teach at
  the Bauhaus.
• Kandinsky has moved from colour to form as the
  dominating compositional element
• He does however use different colours within the
  forms to energize their geometry.
• Design seems to be taking place in an undefined
  space. The layered background colours - light
  blue at bottom, light yellow at top and white in
  the middle - define its depth. The forms tend to
  recede and advance within this depth, creating a
  dynamic, push-pull effect.

52
Rayonism More abstract than either Cubism or
Futurism.
Suprematism Complete abstraction. A very pure
Geometric abstraction. Fine tuned response to
modern feelings.
RUSSIAN CONTRIBUTION TO DEVELOPING ABSTRACTION.
Russian Folk Tradition -Very strong colourist
tradition. -Mystical outlook. -Orthodox
Church. -Their art had always had an abstract
aspect.
Political Readiness to embrace the future.
-Highly developed culture.
53
Quotes
"Colour is the keyboard, the eyes are the
harmonies, the soul is the piano with many
strings. The artist is the hand that plays,
touching one key or another, to cause vibrations
in the soul." Wassily Kandinsky"There is no
must in art because art is free." Wassily
Kandinsky
Why should we not succeed in creating colour
harmonies that correspond to our psychic state.
Wassily Kandinsky
54
Franz Marc (1880-1916).

• He studied at the Munich Art Academy and
  travelled to Paris several times where he saw the
  work of Gauguin, Van Gogh, and the
  Impressionists.
• He became a member of the New Artists Alliance
  and was introduced to the concept of expressive,
  non-representational colour. He wrote
• Their logiscla distribution of the plain, the
  mysterious lines of the one and the colour
  harmony of the other seek to create spiritual
  moods which have little to do with the subject
  protrayed but which prepare the ground for a
  new, highly spiritualise aesthetic.
• With Kandinsky, he founded the almanac "Der Blaue
  Reiter" in 1911 and organized exhibitions with
  this name. He was the groups organiser.
• He and Auguste Macke began to work on a colour
  theory together after the est. of the Blaue
  Reiter group.
• After a visit to meet Orphist Robert Delaunay
  (Fr.) he began to create works with a more
  crystalline form.

55

• Robert Delaunay, Windows Open Simultaneously (1st
  Part, 3rd Motif), 1912.

Delaunays cubism revolved around an intensive
study of the relationships of complementary
colours and simultaneous colours. where colour
becomes an object of the picture.
56
The Dead Sparrow, 1905, Oil on wood, 13 x 16.5cm
57
Marcs colour theories He wrote Blue is the
male prinicple, 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. If, for example, you mix the serious,
spiritual blue with red, then you augment the
blue to an unbearable mourning, and the
reconciling yellow, the complementary colour to
violet, will be indispensible (the woman as
consoler, not as lover). If you mix read and
yellow, you give the passive and female yellow a
sensual power, for which the cool, spiritual blue
-the man- will again be indispensable, and
certainly blue sets itself immediately and
automatically next to orange the colours love
each other. Blue and orange, a thoroughly
festive chord. But if you now mix blue and
yellow to green, you bring red, the material, the
earth to life. But here I, as a painter, always
feel a difference with green you never put the
eternally material, brutal red to rest, as you do
with the other colour chord (just imagine objects
decorated in green and red). Blue (the heaven)
and yellow (the sun) must always come to the aid
of green again, to subdue the material.
58
Franz Marc, Dog lying in the snow, 1910/11. Oil
on canvas, 62 x 105cm.
59
Franz Marc, Dog lying in the snow, 1910/11. Oil
on canvas, 62 x 105cm.

• 1910 he meets Macke.
• Snow pure white, hollows between it pure blue.
  Dog, dull yellow.
• Step by step, I now made the dog pure coloured
  (light yellow) each time the colour became
  purer, the coloured edges around the dog
  disappeared a little more, until finally a pure
  colour relationship was created between the
  yellow, the cold white of the snow and the blue
  within it Furthermore, the blue must not take up
  too much space in relationship to the pure but
  weak yellow if it is to remain complementary (ie.
  justified).

60
Franz Marc, Horse in a landscape, 1910. Oil on
canvas, 85 x 112cm.
61
Franz Marc, Horse in a landscape, 1910. Oil on
canvas, 85 x 112cm.

• Red horse stands out against a predominantly
  yellow background.
• His back faces us, seemingly snubbing humanity as
  he surveys and embraces the landscape.
• The hills in the background repeat the forms of
  the horse as if the same cosmic unity runs
  through both.
• Colours have changed from actual colours to
  essence. Contrast red/green.

62
Franz Marc, The Yellow Cow, 1911. oil on canvas,
140 x 190cm.
63

• Painting of stark contrasts
• Brightness of the cow juxtaposed with the black
  of the trees and mountains, and red fury that
  pervades the landscape almost seems to threaten
  the femininity of the cow.
• Joie de vivre

64
Franz Marc, The little Yellow Horses, 1912, Oil
on canvas, 66 x 104cm.
65
Franz Marc, The Little Blue Horses, 1911, Oil on
canvas, 61 x 101cm.
66

• Taking stock Franz Marc (so far)
• Marc never turned to animal paintings as a genre.
  Rather, his horses and other animals are
  substitutes for people in his art. Human
  qualities.
• For him, they embody everything that is pure,
  true and beautiful. Features which he was
  unable to find in his fellow human beings.

67
Franz Marc, Tiger, 1912. Oil on canvas, 111 x
111.5 cm
68
Franz Marc, Tiger, 1912. Oil on canvas, 111 x
111.5 cm

• Proves his colour associations are not dogmatic,
  as yellow can neither be seen here as female, nor
  as gentle, cheerful or sensual.
• Soft, hilly landscape has been replaced by sharp
  edged, bizzare angular shapes. Cubist influence.
• Has Marc here truly expressed the feeling of the
  tiger, or has he instead imposed on it human
  sensibilities?
• In 1912 with Macke, visits the studio of Robert
  Delaunay. Sees his Windows series and is
  impressed by them.

69
Marc, Deer in the Monastery Garden, 1912, Oil on
canvas, 75 x 101 cm.
70

• Marc, Deer in the Monastery Garden, 1912, Oil on
  canvas, 75 x 101 cm.
• Dominated by abstract, in part bizarre forms
  creating almost no impression of spatial depth.
• Pantheism ie. pantheistic.
• The spirit of the universe in everything.

71

• 1912/13 Marcs views on animals changes
• Marc no longer employing the animal as means of
  portraying himself.
• Another instinct led me away from animals
  towards abstraction I found people ugly very
  early on animals seemed to me more beautiful,
  more pure but even in animals I discovered much
  that was unfeeling and ugly, so that my pictures
  instinctively became increasingly more
  schematic, abstract.

72
Franz Marc, Stables, 1913, Oil on canvas, 73 x
157 cm.
73
Stables

• 1912/13 Sees in the flesh the work of the
  Futurists for the first time. Is enthralled by
  the capturing of light, illumination and
  atmosphere in their work.
• Stables is Marcs reaction to the work that the
  Orphists were producing as well as that of the
  the Futurists.
• The horses are dismembered and abstracted as flat
  shapes parallel to the picture plane.
• It is argued that Marc sees the stables as a
  metaphor for social decadence and mentions it in
  a letter to Kandinsky shortly after war is
  declared.
• I am not angry at this war I am grateful to it
  from the bottom of my heart. There was no other
  avenue to the time of the spirit it was the only
  way of cleansing the stables of Europe.

74

• Giacomo Balla Speed of a Motor Car 1913.

75
Franz Marc, Animal Destinies (The Trees show
their Rings, the Animals their Veins), 1913. Oil
on Canvas, 196 x 266 cm.
76
Animal Destinies (The Trees show their Rings, the
Animals their Veins)

• It shows the political and artistic contexts just
  before WWI via the Futurist lines of force,
  Cubist fragmenting of structure, and Orphic
  colour harmonies.
• The painting is thought to represent the coming
  of conflict and its effect on the natural world
  that Marc had previously considered innocent.
• Three red shards move from the upper left
  diagonally into the tree which falls in an
  opposing diagonalthis is counter-balanced by the
  diagonal explosion of form from top right to
  lower left.
• At the time of the art work Marc wrote
• Today art is moving in a direction of which our
  fathers would never even have dreamed. We stand
  before the new pictures as in a dream and we hear
  the apocalyptic horsemen in the air. There is an
  artistic tension all over Europe.

77
Franz Marc, Fighting Forms, 1914 Oil on Canvas,
91 x 131cm.
78
Broken Forms, 1914
79
Fighting Forms and Broken Forms

• These two works are a part of a series of four
  works including Happy Forms (destroyed), and
  Playing forms.
• The works reveal conflicting nature of artists
  inner emotions which can be seen as a battle of
  spiritual forces against the material world.
• In Fighing Forms the figure on the left can
  perhaps be seen as an eagle (a bird of soaring
  spirit), which is attacking a blue/black
  otherwise undefinable being.
• In the book of Revelation 813 it says, Then I
  looked and I heard an eagle calling with a loud
  cry as it flew in mid-heaven Woe, woe, woe to
  the inhabitants of earth when the trumpets
  sound

80
Franz Marc - Tyrol (1914)
81
Tyrol

• Completed after Marc had visited the Austrian
  town.
• The work began primarily as an abstract
  landscape, which can be identified by the hint of
  a town in the lower centre of the painting. Marc
  had submitted it to the Autumn Salon in 1913 but
  withdrew it to add the Madonna figure in the
  upper centre of the painting, along with a scythe
  that cuts across from the lower right portion of
  the work.

• The scythe and Madonna on a crescent moon refer
  Christian portrayals of the apocalypse as told in
  the Revelation of St John. The scene is meant to
  symbolise the rebirth of mankind after the
  destruction of corrupt society. Examples of this
  can be seen in work done by Durer around 1500.