Franz Marc

Franz Marc (1880–1916) helped shape the Expressionist movement and co-founded Der Blaue Reiter with Wassily Kandinsky. While many modernists looked to the city, Marc turned to animals—horses, deer, cats—using bold color fields, abstract shapes, and clean contour to express inner life and spiritual harmony. Blues stand for the calm and eternal; reds for motion and tension; yellows for joy. The result: images that feel both tender and electric.

Across a brief, blazing career, Marc moved from naturalistic scenes to crystalline, almost cubist structures. Works like Blue Horse I, The Large Blue Horses, and The Fate of the Animals show his signature mix of rhythm, geometry, and saturated color. Though he died in World War I at 36, his influence on 20th-century modernism is immense—bridging figuration and abstraction with feeling, not fuss.