With Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc founded the famous, essentially
romantic, and rather spiritual association of Expressionist Artists,
Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider), in 1911.
The name The Blue Rider was derived from both artists having
a fondness for the color blue, Marc having a love for horses, and from
Kandinsky's enjoyment of riding them.
Marc saw animals as the betrayed but uncontaminated guardians of
what was left of innocence and unspoiled nature. He painted animals
with a profoundly moving love: a love for what they represented
and could still experience, unlike humanity. His paintings of animals
are a stylized and luminous vision of creatures that can live without
the angers of the ego.
