Artist Franz Mark - friend and like-minded
Wassily Kandinsky, "The Blue Rider" German expressionism.

"My age, my beast,

who can

look into your pupils

And glue with his blood

Two centuries of vertebrae?

These lines of Osip Mandelstam are like an epigraph to the work, and to the whole life of Franz Mark. The turn of the century divided the short life of the German artist almost in half: he was born in 1880 and died in 1916 at the front, in the battle of Verdun. Franz Marc was among those masters who glued together the vertebrae of two centuries with the blood of his work: the path from the post-impressionist painting that completed the 19th century to abstract art The 20th century went through expressionism, and Mark was his key figure. He belonged to the number of Europeans who did not seem to notice the delimitation of countries on the eve of the First World War: together with Wassily Kandinsky, Mark became the founder of the legendary Blue Rider association, a creative union of Russian and German artists. Franz Marc was devoted to one theme: he painted and painted animals. Looking into the pupils of the beast, beautiful and free, he sought answers to the questions of his time and to eternal questions of all times. The simple plots of his works seem idyllic: beautiful animals living among virgin nature. But the closer was the war that broke the spine of the century, the more clearly felt the longing in the eyes of his animals and the doom in the curves of their bodies.

Franz Mark. Red deer. 1912 G.

The life of Franz Marc developed quite well: he did not know such misfortunes that darkened the existence of many artists, such as misunderstanding of loved ones, non-recognition, loneliness, poverty. He was born in Munich, which at that time was one of the cultural capitals of Europe, in an intelligent family of hereditary lawyers. Franz's father - Wilhelm Mark - cheated family tradition and became an artist. his landscapes and genre paintings enjoyed success in their time; on one of them we see the fifteen-year-old Franz, who is making something out of wood.

Wilhelm Mark. Portrait of Franz Marc. 1895

Having received an excellent gymnasium education, Franz was going to study theology at the University of Munich. For a thoughtful, sensitive young man, it seemed a good choice, but after passing military service he changed his plans, deciding to become an artist. From 1900 to 1903, Mark was a diligent student of the Munich Academy of Arts, until he got to Paris and saw with his own eyes the paintings of Manet and Cezanne, Gauguin and Van Gogh. After fresh Parisian impressions, the stagnant academic atmosphere became unbearable for Mark. After leaving the walls of the academy, he rented a workshop in the Munich quarter of Schwabing and began to work independently.

Schwabing was the center of bohemian life, exciting acquaintances were quickly made here. Mark went through a stormy affair that brought him to depression with a married lady, artist Anette von Eckardt, and ended up in a painful situation. love triangle, torn between two Marias, also artists - Maria Shnyur and Maria Frank. He married the beautiful and independent Maria Shnyur in 1907, but almost immediately realized his mistake. This marriage, which soon became formal, did not allow him to legalize relations with Maria Frank until 1911. Outwardly, they did not seem like a very suitable couple - Franz, a refined intellectual with noble features, and a round-faced Maria with a rude peasant face. But it was she, cordial and open, who became the woman of his life.

Franz Mark. Two cats. 1909

Both Marys are depicted in a small sketch "Two Women on the Mountain" (1906). This is one of the few works of the artist in which people are depicted. In almost all of his paintings, watercolors and engravings, we see animals: deer, bulls, cows, cats, tigers, monkeys, foxes, wild boars, but most often - horses. He fell in love with them forever during the years of military service.

Mark, an excellent draftsman, had a special talent for depicting animals. In addition, he specifically studied the anatomy of animals, his reference book was "Animal Life" by A. Brem, he spent whole days at the zoo, watching animals and making sketches. In all the works of the artist, whether it is a pencil sketch or a complex pictorial composition, an early realistic canvas or an expressionist painting, we unmistakably recognize the characteristic habit of the beast: the fragile grace of a roe deer, the springy energy of a tiger, the impulsiveness of a restless monkey, the slowness of a massive bull, the proud becoming of a horse.

Franz Mark. Cats on red drapery 1909-1910

However, it is impossible to call Franz Marc an animalist: the beast was not a realistic “nature” for him, but a higher being, a symbol of natural, pure, perfect and harmonious being. The literary gifted artist eloquently expressed his creative credo in articles and letters to friends: “My goals do not lie mainly in the field of animalistics. /…/ I am trying to increase my sense of the organic rhythm of all things, trying to pantheistically feel the trembling and flow of blood in nature, in trees, in animals, in the air. The “animal” vision of the world seemed to him like a window into the natural kingdom inaccessible to man: “Is there anything more mysterious for an artist than the reflection of nature in the eyes of an animal? How does a horse or an eagle, a roe deer or a dog see the world? How poor and soulless is our idea of ​​placing animals in the landscape that our eyes see, instead of penetrating into their souls..

August Macke. Portrait of Franz Marc. 1910

Many circumstances had a beneficial effect on the formation of the style of Franz Marc. These are trips to Paris in 1907 and 1912, where he came into contact with the art of his contemporaries, the Fauvists and Cubists, among whom Robert Delaunay was especially close to him. This is a friendship that began in 1910 with the young German expressionist August Macke, who for the few remaining years of his life (the twenty-seven-year-old Macke died at the front in 1914) became his like-minded person.

Munich, 1911. Left - Maria Mark and Franz Mark,
in the center - Wassily Kandinsky.

Mark's talent fully flourished in the circle of artists who were united in 1911 by the Blue Rider, a community whose soul was Wassily Kandinsky and himself, Franz Marc. “The blue rider is the two of us,” Kandinsky later said. Together, having appropriated, according to Kandinsky, "dictatorial powers", they prepared the exhibitions of The Blue Rider, edited together the almanac of the same name. Even the appearance of the name “The Blue Rider”, which, as Kandinsky recalled, was born at the coffee table, testifies to the ease of mutual understanding between the two artists: “ We both loved blue, Mark loved horses, I loved riders. And the name came by itself. (Just like Kandinsky, Mark attached symbolic meaning to color: blue meant for him masculinity, firmness and spirituality.) The powerful personality of Kandinsky in no way suppressed Mark. On the contrary, his individual style at the time of their collaboration, it developed very dynamically: moving from expressionism to abstraction, Mark kept pace with European art.

Franz Mark. Blue horse. 1911

Let's compare Mark's three paintings that have become classics of German expressionism and were painted with an interval of about a year - "The Blue Horse" (1911), "Tiger" (1912) and "Foxes" (1913). Looking at the Blue Horse canvas, you understand that the artist’s words about the “organic rhythm of all things” are not theorizing, but a deep genuine feeling. Horse figure, landscape and plant on foreground combines a wave-like rhythm: the motif of the arc is clearly repeated in the outlines of the mountains, in the silhouette of the animal and in the bends of the leaves. Occupying the entire canvas in height, written in perspective from below and therefore towering above the viewer, the figure of the horse is majestic and monumental, like a statue of the deity of these mountains. There is a lot in the picture that is characteristic of Mark - bright fantastic colors, the absence of air, dense filling of the canvas.

Franz Mark. Tiger.1912

If in The Blue Horse the generalized figure of the animal retains the integrity of the form, and the alpine landscape remains recognizable, then in The Tiger Mark transforms the real image more tangibly. The contours of the tiger's figure are outlined with swift zigzags and broken lines, and the surface of the body is divided into triangles and trapeziums. The artist seems to expose the muscles hidden under the skin of the beast, reveals the structure of the animal's body. The saturated background of the picture, consisting of a pile of intricately intersecting planes, partly continues and repeats the lines set in the figure of the beast, so that the tiger seems to be an integral part of the environment, and does not dominate it, like a blue horse. This background is, in fact, a pure abstraction, although, of course, one can imagine that the artist depicted a thicket in which a tiger lurked, lurking prey.

In the painting "Foxes" we see the complete interpenetration of forms, the blurring of the line between the animal and its environment. It seems that the artist "cuts" the figures of two foxes into fragments and mixes them, like pieces of a puzzle. At the same time, one clearly traced detail - a narrow, with a characteristic slope, the muzzle of a fox - sets the theme of the picture and connects an almost abstract canvas with reality. These formal searches had a serious spiritual meaning for Mark: he was looking for a way from the external appearance of things (“the appearance is always flat”) to their inner essence and saw the purpose of art in "revealing the unearthly life that secretly dwells in everything, in destroying the mirror of life in order to face being."

Franz Mark. The fate of animals. 1913

In Mark's works, the world of nature appears whole and conflict-free, there is no opposition of predators and their victims, he never depicts hunting scenes, the suffering of animals, extremely rarely - dead animals. All the more significant was the appearance of the painting "The Fates of Animals", written in 1913 - the last pre-war year. The subtitle "Trees show their rings, and animals show their veins" emphasizes the tragic idea of ​​the canvas: only felled trees expose the rings, only dead animals expose their insides. The forest thicket appears in the picture as a symbol of the hidden world of nature, which is destroyed and perishes under the pressure of an unknown formidable force. In the apocalyptic chaos, we distinguish predatory red flashes and rays, falling trunks, restless horses, frightened huddled deer, wild boars seeking shelter, and in the center of the canvas - as the personification of an innocent victim - a blue doe, raising her head to the sky.

Franz Mark. Drawing from the front notepad

This requiem painting, which became a prophecy of the coming war, is one of the last major works of Mark, in which he retained a connection with figurative painting. In 1914, he managed to write several abstract compositions (Tirol, Struggling Forms) and, obviously, stood on the threshold of a new stage in his work. However, in the front-line notebook, Mark, next to abstractions, still drew deer and his favorite horses. It is impossible to say for sure how the fate of the artist would have developed if he had survived the Verdun meat grinder. In the history of art of the 20th century, Franz Marc forever remained a swift horseman, galloping on a free blue horse of expressionism.

Marina Agranovskaya

Franz Marc. 1880-1916

German expressionist painter, symbolist. Organizer of the Blue Rider group.

German artist with Jewish roots Franz Moritz Wilhelm Mark was born on February 8, 1880 in Munich in the family of a lawyer Wilhelm Mark, who was fond of landscape painting. AT early age the future artist thought about theology, wanting to devote himself religious activities, then felt attracted to philosophy, having entered the university in 1899 at the corresponding faculty, but by 1900 he realized that his vocation was art. The realization of the dream began with the entry into the Munich Academy of Arts.

Studying at the academy was professionally rewarding, but oppressive with traditional approaches to the teaching system, and with a visit to Paris in 1903, Mark felt the atmosphere of the true triumph of art, discovering impressionism, the magnificence of the works of ancient masters collected in the Louvre, as well as Japanese engraving with its linear decorative effect. Looking for own style and plots was a passion for modernity.

The second trip to Paris, carried out in 1907, prompted Mark to study the anatomy of animals, which could contribute to the realization of his creative idea: to convey the essence of nature through animal world; already in his childhood, Mark saw imperfection in people, and believed that the purity of animals is due to their natural "unreasonableness", and the "dirt" of thinking beings is due to the destructive influence of civilization. The sketch for the tapestry "Orpheus and the Beasts" is the first test presented to the public, where the author tried to "remember" the forgotten earthly paradise and show the animals in their original form, with their obedience to the will of the Creator.

After 1908, the plots of Mark's works are more and more replete with images of a horse against a landscape, and by 1910, signs appear in his paintings, indicating an unbalanced state of mind, which was largely caused by failures in relationships with women. At the beginning of the same year, the first meeting with the expressionist August Macke takes place, and in September, in Munich, he joins the association of artists of this style, but at the end of 1911, with some like-minded people, he leaves the group, and together with Kandinsky organizes the Blue Rider. This year is also significant for Mark with the creation of the painting "Three Red Horses", the first completed work written in his unique "animal" style.

Despite participating in the exhibition "The Blue Rider" in 1911, the artist's work differs from the works of his fellow expressionists, he does not want to introduce intense exaltation into the color and shape of his paintings, and maintains a romantic line in search of an ideal and inner harmony.

In 1913, in an intuitive anticipation of the grandiose and tragic military events, Mark paints paintings filled with disturbing motifs, his painting becomes more abstract and torn. In the lost painting “The Tower of Blue Horses”, the image of a horse, traditionally harmonious in his works, is a link in a structure devoid of stability, with collapsing forms; in the apocalyptic prophetic work "The Fate of Animals" - one of his most famous works, Mark's anxious moods reached a climax.

Abstract painting captured the artist in 1914, in the last year of his creative way. The dynamics of the development of his pictorial manner during this period indicated the erasure of the threshold of reality, and it was noticeable that there was a confident movement in the direction of abstract art.

The battle of Verdun did not allow Franz Mark to carry out his creative plans, and on March 4, 1916 he died with the conviction that he was participating in a war that could bring spiritual renewal not only to himself, but also to the German intelligentsia. Death came from a fragment of a shell fired from a gun belonging to a country whose art touched the strings in him that made him a true artist.

History reference:
For the first time in history, a blue horse was depicted on the fresco "Athletes and Rider" in the "Tomb of the Chariots" in 490 BC.

After getting acquainted with the biography of the German artist Franz Mark, you will understand why the horses in his paintings are multi-colored, where the name came from artistic group, which he organized, and how the color theory invented by him is built.

Franz Mark
Franz Marc

August Macke Portrait of Franz Marc 1910
Franz Marc Self-portrait with a Breton hat 1905

A German artist who combined the features of symbolism and expressionism in his work, one of the founders of the Blue Rider group.
The main theme of Mark, to which he attached a mystical and symbolic meaning, is the depiction of animals in the nature around them. In his ecstatic images, marked by the dynamics of forms, a sharp contour drawing, intense color (several primary colors), reflected a spontaneous rejection of modern reality and a premonition of future social upheavals.

Born in the family of an artist - a professional landscape painter Wilhelm Mark. Dreamed of becoming a priest.
In 1899, Mark entered the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Munich, but did not return there after serving in the army.
In 1900 he turned to art and from 1900 to 1903 studied at the Munich Academy of Arts with G. Hakl and V. Dietz. However history painting, which was emphasized at the academy, as well as the naturalism it propagated, were not of interest to the artist.

Photos by F. Mark

Having visited Paris (for the first time in 1903, then in 1907 and 1912), he was influenced by french impressionism and post-impressionism. Here he discovered the great artists - Cezanne, Gauguin and Van Gogh. Their creativity has produced deepest impression for a young painter. Van Gogh was especially close to him in spirit. After a second trip to Paris, the artist begins to seriously study the anatomy of animals in order to most fully embody his vision of nature in painting.

Horses in the pasture 1910

In his early pieces he retained a traditional, more naturalistic palette, although he strove for rhythmic generalizations of forms in the spirit of symbolism; Since 1908, the image of a horse against the background of a conditional landscape has become the leitmotif of his painting.

Blue horses 1911

Blue horse 1911

Blue horse 1911

To make the animals in his paintings as harmonious as possible, Franz tried to look at the world through their eyes. He even wrote a text once, titled "How does the horse see the world?". The rejection of natural color increased the effect of the paintings on the audience. This approach was also used french artists- Fauvists, but they did it for the sake of decoration, and Mark, as he himself claimed, in order to enhance the significance of the animal.

His personal life does not add up. He is going through a painful affair with the artist Anette von Eckardt. His compassionate marriage to Maria Shnyur ends in failure. All this makes him look for an outlet in the "primitive" animal world.

Two horses 1911-12

Shepherds 1911-12

Dreams 1912

Then, by the end of the 1910s, in correspondence with his friend, the artist A. Macke, he developed his own color theory, where he gave each of the primary colors a special spiritual meaning (blue embodied for him the “masculine” and “ascetic” beginning, yellow - "femininity" and "joy of life", red - the oppression of "rough and heavy" matter).

Yellow horses 1912

Red and blue horses 1912

Long Yellow Horse 1913

In 1911 he joined the New Munich Art Association, where Wassily Kandinsky played a leading role. In the same year, Mark and Kandinsky left the association, founding the Blue Rider group and releasing (in 1912) an almanac of the same name, decorated with their engravings and drawings. In an interview in 1930, Kandinsky told why such a name arose: both founders loved Blue colour in addition, Mark loved horses, and Kandinsky ran.
From December 1911 to January 1912, the editors of the almanac opened an exhibition of paintings by W. Kandinsky, F. Mark, A. Macke and others in the Tanhauser Gallery in Munich, which became the front of German expressionism, which laid the foundation for the Blue Rider association.

Two horses. Red and blue. 1912

Blue horse 1912

In 1912, he met Robert Delaunay, whose style, along with Italian Futurism and Cubism, became the next source of inspiration for the artist. The mature paintings of the master are dedicated to animals, presented as higher, purer creatures in relation to man, who seemed too ugly to Mark. Among the characteristic paintings of this kind, with their smooth rhythms and bright and at the same time dramatic color contrasts, are Red Horses (1910–1912, Folkwang Museum, Essen). Under the influence of Italian Futurism, the artist began to decompose forms into component planes, making his images more dynamic (The Fate of Animals, 1913, Art Museum, Basel). The apocalyptic mood inherent in these things reached its apogee in his last large animalistic canvas, The Tower of the Blue Horses (1913).

Blue Horse Tower 1913

Mark then moved on to abstract painting, seeking to express the main motifs of his work in compositions that combine pure colorful and linear effects (1914).
With all his being, Franz Marc was against the war, but there was no question of emigration, evading military duties. After the outbreak of World War I, he volunteered for the front. In letters to his mother, the artist predicted his own death on the battlefield. And indeed, he died on March 4, 1916 in the battle of Verdun, which lasted almost six months and claimed hundreds of thousands of lives. Mark was killed by a shell fragment during the Verdun operation, at the age of 36, without realizing his creative plans to the end ..

Two blue horses 1913
Blue foals 1913

Sleeping Horses 1913

After Mark's death, friends organized his exhibitions in Berlin, and in the 1920s they collected and published the artist's statements about art. Under fascism, Mark's works were removed from museums.

Materials from WIKIPEDIA and from the site:
http://www.odessapassage.com/passage/magazine_details.aspx?id=36397

Vladimir Novikov Blue Horse 2006

Franz Mark (02/08/1880 - 03/04/1916) - German artist and graphic artist, one of the founders of the Blue Rider art group. Mark is world famous for his colorful, expressionistic animal paintings.

Mark was born in Munich in the family of a landscape painter. He grew up in an atmosphere of strict piety and dreamed of becoming a priest.

1900: In search of style. In 1900, Mark began to study at the Munich Art Academy. His early works are marked by the influence of the Munich school: landscape paintings made in joyful colors, fine details of which are carefully drawn with a thin brush.

In Paris, Franz Marc got acquainted with the work of the Impressionists, which led (1903) to a change in Marc's artistic views. He left the academy and approached the Impressionist style of painting, working with light, radiant colors, which he applied in broad, careless strokes.

In 1905, melancholy and often under the influence of another spiritual crisis, Mark met the artists Marie Schnuer and Maria Frank. Although he loved Maria Frank, he nevertheless married (1907) Marie Schnuer. A year later, their union broke up, while Shnyur, despite the initial agreement, filed a lawsuit for compensation by Mark for damages from the divorce, thereby preventing her wedding. ex-husband with Frank. During a summer stay in Lenggriese in 1908, Mark painted his first painting of a horse. He was still in search of his own form language. The image was reduced to isolating the main thing and was characterized by a rhythmic direction of strokes, although the color palette remained naturalistically complete.

1910: Color theory. In correspondence with his friend August Macke, Mark developed his own color theory, according to which each of the three primary colors was characterized by individual properties: blue represented "masculine, spiritual and ascetic essence", yellow - "feminine, tenderness and joys of life"; red personified matter as such and therefore was "rough and heavy", being in opposition to the previous two. One of the first paintings in which he embodied his theory of color correlation was Horse in a Landscape (1910).

1911-1913: Famous animal painter. Animals in Mark's eyes were the bearers of such qualities as beauty, purity and fidelity, which he no longer looked forward to finding in the human environment. Drawing animals, Mark did not strive to capture them through the eyes of a person, but rather imagined himself in their place. Thus, in the painting "Roe deer in the forest II" (1912), the viewer sees a roe deer curled up in a ball in the foreground, which feels safe, while the figures in the background are preparing to attack. Among the others famous works This period can be called the painting "Blue Horse I", "Yellow Cow", "Little Blue Horses" (all - 1911), as well as "Tiger" (1912).

1911: "The Blue Rider". In 1911, Mark joined the "New Association of Artists of Munich", which also belonged to Wassily Kandinsky. In the same year, Kandinsky and Mark began work on an almanac, in which, according to their plan, paintings were to be collected. different cultures and articles about artists. Tensions within the Association forced Mark and Kandinsky to leave the group and create their own, which they called the Blue Rider. They defined their artistic goal as "combining pure color with pure form."

1912: The path to abstraction. After the publication of the almanac "The Blue Rider" (1912), Mark became interested in abstract painting: animals are often presented in the form of formulas that need to be deciphered. Impressed by the exhibition of works by Italian futurists, Mark began to subordinate color to an intricate heap of planes.

The motif of the picture was subjected to a quasi-prismatic decomposition into geometric shapes("Roe deer in the monastery garden", 1912; "The fate of the beast", 1913; "Stables", 1913/14). At the same time, he worked on the "Blue Horse Tower" (finished in 1913), which was his last creation for the glory of the animal world. In the future, Mark turned exclusively to abstract painting. In the four so-called "pictures-forms" (1914), due to the appropriate mutual arrangement of form and color, he doubles the feeling of either idyll and harmony, or struggle and decline. Immediately after the outbreak of the First World War, Mark went to the front as a volunteer, expecting that the war would bring purification and renewal to society. In 1916 he died near Verdun (France) at the age of 36.

Expressionist paintings have always fascinated and surprised art lovers. This trend appeared at the end of the 19th century, but reached its greatest prosperity at the beginning of the 20th. Most prominent representatives of this direction were born in Austria and Germany. Franz Mark was no exception. He, along with other creators, tried to express in his paintings his view of the ugliness of civilization that caused the events of the 20th century, in particular the First World War.

Birth

Franz Marc was born in 1880. His father was also an artist, which directly influenced his future destiny. Despite the fact that in his youth he dreamed of becoming a priest, at the age of 20 he decided to pay attention to art.

Education

The painter lived a short life. The Academy of Arts became his home, where he studied and got acquainted with impressionism and post-impressionism. Then this place was a kind of abode of world creativity. The Munich Academy of Arts gathered under its roof future famous artists. Hackl and Dietz studied alongside Franz. Although they became famous, they still could not catch up with Mark.

The young artist tried not to sit still, but to study art not only in his own country. This explains him where he just got acquainted with the French trends in art. Here he could see the works of the great Van Gogh and Gauguin.

The painter's second trip to Paris influenced the themes of his future creations. Returning to Munich, he began to study animal anatomy in depth in order to portray his view of nature in his paintings.

"Blue Rider"

"New Munich artistic association"Caught the attention of Franz after meeting August Macke. Then, in 1910, he decided to be part of this organization. For a long time he could not meet the head of the community, Wassily Kandinsky. A year later, they finally met. After 10 months, the artists Kandinsky, Macke and Franz decided to create their own organization, the Blue Rider.

Immediately they were able to organize an exhibition where Franz presented his work. Then the best German expressionist paintings were collected in the Tanhauser Gallery. A trio of Munich painters worked to promote their society.

Cubism and the last years of life

The last stage in the life of Franz Marc can be considered his acquaintance with the work of Robert Delaunay. His Italian cubism and futurism made a significant contribution to the future work of the German painter. At the end of his life, Mark changed direction in his work. His canvases depicted increasingly abstract details, torn and blocky elements.

Inspired many creators of art and literature to their work. But over time, the creators became disillusioned with the events and realities of the war. Franz Marc voluntarily went to the front. There he, like many other creative people, became disillusioned with the events. He was wounded by bloodshed, terrible pictures and a sad outcome. But the artist was not destined to return and embody all his creative ideas. At the age of 36, the painter died from a shell fragment near Verdun.

Canvases and style

Life influences the artist, his creativity and style. Franz also experienced changes that poured new colors into his canvases. The German was by nature a dreamer. He suffered for humanity and grieved for the lost values ​​in modern world. In the paintings, he tried to display something fantastic, peaceful, beautiful, but with the naked eye you can see that each canvas was filled with longing.

Writers and artists of the early 20th century tried to find and recreate the golden age, but the war turned everything into a pile of rubble, and creative people tried to heal the wounds. In his works, Franz Marc tried to reflect, first of all, the philosophical principle. And everything that was depicted in the pictures mattered. Each color was given its own symbols, each item was endowed with something special. Colors and shapes influenced the human psyche, his mood and self-values.

"Blue Horse"

Always distinguished by a special approach to the creation of his paintings, Franz Marc. The "Blue Horse" has become something symbolic in the work of the painter. This picture is the most popular among the rest. In addition, along with others, she stands out with a special style. Just one look at her brings a person into a state of charm and poignancy.

The picture shows a horse that is full of strength. It symbolizes the youth. The body of the horse has a somewhat broken shape and an interesting overexposure. A white beam seems to dig into the chest, and the mane and hooves, on the contrary, are shrouded in blue.

The fact that the color of the horse is blue is of unusual interest. But it is worth noting no less attractive background. Bottom line: the horse complements the background, and the background complements the horse. As conceived by the painter, these two objects cannot exist separately, they are interconnected and are one whole, although they stand out from each other.

After the creation of this picture, Franz tried to explain his idea to Maka. He argued that blue is the severity of a man, yellow is feminine softness and sensuality, red is a matter that is suppressed by the two previous shades.

"Birds"

Another picture worthy of your attention. It was also written by Franz Marc. "Birds" is another special work of the artist. It was written in 1914 and became the first unusual work, which characterized new style painter. This is a picture from the very mature painting of Mark, which became a reflection of the animal world. The artist felt that animals were the very ideal, which were much higher and cleaner than people.

“Birds” is the same style that appeared after. Such a picture, despite its bright colors, emphasizes some kind of anxiety and hostility. Most likely, this is due to sharp transitions from one shade to another. The picture becomes "prickly" and apocalyptic.

Looking at the canvas, it seems that there is a kind of explosion that excites and disturbs the birds. They scatter and at the same time remain calm. When the world is overtaken by war, someone starts to fuss, and someone tries to accept the situation. "Birds" became a clear reflection of the military world with its fears and anxieties.