Franz Marc

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Franz Marc

• Kerstin
• Elizabeth (Lisa) Edwards

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Childhood

• Born on February 8, 1880, in Munich, Germany.
• His father, Wilhelm, was a professional landscape
  painter. His mother, Sophie, was an Alsacian from
  a strict Calvinist tradition.

• His grandparents were amateur artists who copied
  the masters.
• According to his first biographer, Alois Schardt,
  Marc was so ugly at birth that his father fainted
  when he took a first close look at him.

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Education

• His father encouraged him to study art but he
  showed no interest in it at first.
• As a young boy, Marc studied theology intensely
  and originally wanted to become a priest. In
  1898, he gave up that goal to study philosophy at
  the University of Munich.

• In 1900, he abandoned this idea and decided to
  take painting classes at the Munich Academy of
  Fine Arts, where his father worked as a professor.

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Impressionism in Paris

• At that time, Paris was considered the center of
  the arts, where impressionism had revolutionized
  the traditional art world.
• Traveling to Paris and studying the modern French
  painters was considered a necessity for a
  progressive young artist.

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Discovering Impressionism

• Marc took several trips to Paris, the first in
  1903 when he had his first contacts with the
  Impressionists.
• He was deeply influenced by the works of the
  modern French painters, especially the art of
  Vincent van Gogh.

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Impressionism

• Impressionism is a style of painting
  characterized chiefly by depicting the natural
  appearances of objects by means of short brush
  strokes or dabs of primary unmixed colors in
  order to give the impression of reflected light.
  It concentrates on the general tone and effect
  produced by a subject, without elaboration of
  details.

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Troubles with depression

• On his return from Greece, still depressed, he
  wrote At present I have only one purpose in life
  to drown it in my paintingand to strangle all
  the passionate vital instincts.
• In 1907, this period of anxiety ended when he
  left for Paris again on his wedding night,
  fleeing his newly-wed wife, Marie Schnür.

• Marcs artistic development was accompanied by
  feelings of depression. He spent summers in the
  mountains in 1905 and 1906 and also traveled to
  Greece attempting to recuperate from unhappy love
  affairs.

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Inspired by Nature

• Marc looked towards nature and animals for
  inspiration. His constant thematic concern was
  the relationship between animal and human
  spheres.
• For Marc, animals represented a spiritual
  attitude.

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Inspired by Nature

• He wrote People with their lack of piety,
  especially men, never touched my true feelings.
  But animals with their virginal sense of life
  awakened all that is good in me.
• Marc felt that animals were somehow more natural
  or pure than people. He believed that through
  animals he could represent his own spiritual
  feeling.

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A Famous Work

• Marcs most important work of 1908 was Large
  Lenggries Horse Painting 1. He had cut the
  painting in pieces and used it to pad the roof of
  his home. In 1936 the painting was found and
  restored.

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Other Interests

• In 1910, Marc met the artist August Macke, who
  further deepened Marcs understanding of the
  coloristic advances in France.
• In 1911 Marc joined a group known as the Neue
  Künstlervereinigung, and became a close friend of
  Wassily Kandinsky, chief spokesman of the group.
  

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Other Interests

• The Neue Künstlervereinigungs goal was to create
  art, and feature artists, that did not focus
  solely on emotional subjects.
• Soon, the group no longer wanted to feature
  Marcs or Kandinskys most modern works because
  they were too abstract. The group stated that
  they could not accept incomprehensible paintings.
• The two artists were forced to withdraw
  themselves from the group and they founded
  another artistic movement, Der Blaue Reiter.

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Der Blaue Reiter

• They named the group Der Blaue Reiter after one
  of Kandinskys paintings called Le Chevalier
  Bleu, and also because of both of their interests
  in the horse and rider.

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Der Blaue Reiter

• The first exhibitions of The Blue Rider included
  works by Kandinsky, Marc, Pablo Picasso, Paul
  Klee, Henri Rousseau, Robert Delaunay, and Arnold
  Schönberg.
• Other members of the group include August Macke,
  Paul Klee, Albert Bloch, Gabriele Münter,
  Heinrich Campendonk, and David and Vladimir
  Burliuk.

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Der Blaue Reiter

• The aim of Der Blaue Reiter was to call attention
  to new ideas and theories about the arts,
  including painting, music, and theatre. Much of
  this focus was to use these three art forms as
  complimentary to one another, incorporating many
  of the same ideas interchangeably throughout
  them.
• Another large focus of the group was to express
  spirituality through the arts.

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Der Blaue Reiter

• The Blue Riders believed that colors, shapes and
  forms had equivalence with sounds and music, and
  sought to create color harmonies which would be
  purifying to the soul.
• The artists who took part in The Blue Rider were
  considered to be the pioneers of abstract art or
  abstract expressionism. Their work promoted
  individual expression and broke free from any
  artistic restraints.

18
Lifes End

• When, World War I began, Marc volunteered for the
  German military service, along with his good
  friend August Macke.
• Marc kept kept a notebook with drawings for the
  paintings he would create as soon as he was done
  with the military.
• Marc was killed in action, near Verdun, France,
  on March 4, 1916.

19
Franz Marc Museum

• A house that Marc lived in in Kochel-am-See was
  made into a museum in 1986. It has about twenty
  of his paintings, as well as numerous sketches
  and drawings, and paintings by other Blue Rider
  artists.

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Works Cited

• http//www.artchive.com/artchive/M/marc.html
• http//www.csa.com/discoveryguides/marc/overview.p
  hp
• http//www.dropbears.com/a/art/biography/Franz_Mar
  c.html
• http//www.dropbears.com/a/art/biography/Franz_Mar
  c.html
• http//www.artchive.com/artchive/M/marc.html
• http//hs.riverdale.k12.or.us/dthompso/art/marc/p
  hotos.html