October 2005
Animal Magic
Discover Franz Marc's pioneering work at the Lenbachhaus
An exhibition devoted to one of the pioneering artists of German Expressionism—Franz Marc—has gone on show at the Lenbachhaus. As well as some 95 paintings, including many of the striking animal images for which Marc was best known and loved, the exhibition reveals the full range of the artist’s talent, with 145 works on paper as well as examples of his sculpture, applied art and reverse-glass painting. Indeed, it is a fitting tribute to mark the 125th anniversary of his birth.
Born in Munich in 1880, Marc was raised in an upper middle-class family, and trained at the city’s Art Academy in 1900–02. His early work embraces the academic style; sojourns in Paris, however, exposed him to the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists, including the work of Paul Gauguin and Vincent van Gogh, both of whom played a decisive role in Marc’s artistic development—as did Wassily Kandinsky (whom he met later, in 1911).
Early that year, Marc joined the New Artists’ Association (Neue Künstlervereinigung) in Munich, a few months later cofounding a splinter artists’ group called The Blue Rider (Der Blaue Reiter) with Kandinsky and Gabriele Münter in protest against the growing conservatism of the former association. In August 1914, on the outbreak of World War I, Marc followed in the footsteps of fellow Blue Rider artist August Macke and volunteered to fight in the army; regrettably, in 1916, Marc also followed his friend to the grave at the age of only 36.
Based on the latest research into Marc’s art, this exhibition attempts to draw new parallels and to provide new insights into the artist’s oeuvre by comparing, for example, how he dealt with the same subject matter in different media and with various techniques. To this end, in addition to the usual paintings and single-sheet drawings, sketchbooks, postcards and prints are also on display. Moreover, in the accompanying catalogue (also available in English), Marc’s keen interest in the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche is likewise explored, as is his little-known fascination with the art of exotic cultures, such as those of Africa, Japan and Oceania.
Arranged chronologically and then thematically, the majority of the exhibits feature animals. These were Marc’s preferred (and eventually exclusive) subjects because he believed animals—the very embodiment of instinct—are spiritually purer than human beings. As he wrote to his wife, Maria Marc, from the field on Christmas Eve in 1914: “I’m beginning to see behind things, or rather through them—the ‘behind’ that things tend to conceal with their illusions.” In portraying animals he endeavored to capture the mystical inner forces of nature. He did not, therefore, attempt to depict how
he saw animals, but instead how
they perceived their own existence. In doing so, he sought to invest his pictures with such an intensity of life that one can “feel the animal life quivering within” them.
The comprehensiveness of the show enables visitors to trace the various creative phases of Marc’s art. In addition to his early naturalistic works, those produced around 1911—by which time the artist had evolved a distinctive visual idiom of his own—are also well represented. His work from this period is characterized by simple, rhythmic shapes rendered in bold colors. An example is
Cows, Yellow, Red, Green of 1911, which speaks a language of its own—indeed, a language with symbolic meaning: “Blue is the male principle, astringent and spiritual. Yellow is the female principle, gentle, gay and sensual. Red is matter, brutal and heavy, and always the color to be opposed and overcome by the other two.”
Indebted to his study of Cubism and Futurism, Marc’s abstract mature work (1912–14) is also on display as part of the exhibition, including
Birds of 1914 with its dense mass of fragmented shapes. As the artist himself stressed, he strove increasingly for pure abstraction and the eschewal of spatial depth as a means of conveying the spiritual. Indeed, it is precisely his late works that are considered to be among the most powerful examples of German Expressionism. If you have never experienced the full range of Franz Marc’s work, this is a unique opportunity that should not be missed.
