| Franz Marc (German, 1880-1916) is, without any reservation, my favorite artist. I first saw one of his paintings while strolling around the Art Institute of Chicago - a place I frequented before and during living in that city. The painting I saw was "The Bewitched Mill", and the riot of colors and the marvelous almost Cubistic forms literally stopped me in my tracks. I can still recall the corner of the room where I saw it, and went back to visit the painting as many times as I could (having a museum membership helped!). Impressed by such painters as Gauguin and Van Gogh, Marc was a pioneer in the birth of abstract art at the beginning of the twentieth-century. He helped Wassily Kandinsky found The Blaue Reiter Group, which put forth a new program for art based on exuberant color and on profoundly felt emotional and spiritual states. It was Marc's particular contribution to introduce paradisiacal imagery that had as its central theme a collection of animals, most notably a group of magnificent horses. I have been wanting to put up a gallery of as many of his paintings as I could find - and my search for more of his works have lead to some wonderful discoveries. I still love "The Bewitched Mill" - but there are many others now that make me marvel anew at the pure talent and passion in his work. Tragically, Marc was killed in battle during World War I, at the age of thirty-six - but not before he had created some of the most exciting and touching paintings of the Expressionist movement. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do. |
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