Collection: Art prints by Franz Marc

Franz Marc was a German painter and is considered one of the most important representatives of Expressionism and a co-founder of the artists' group "Der Blaue Reiter", one of the most influential associations of the European avant-garde in the early 20th century. He was born in Munich in 1880 and received his artistic training at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts before trips to Paris brought him into contact with French modernism and, in particular, his encounter with the work of the Impressionists, the Fauves and finally Robert Delaunay's cubist-orphistic theory of color changed his style permanently and led him on a path that was unprecedented in German painting.

Marc developed a deep, almost mystical affection for the animal as a subject early on. It was not man, but the animal that was the focus of his work - not as a mere motif or staffage, but as the bearer of a purer, more original way of existence, which Marc contrasted with the alienated human life corrupted by civilization. Horses, deer, foxes, cows and birds populate his paintings, depicted not in naturalistic fidelity but in bright, symbolically charged colors that were intended to make their inner essence and spiritual energy visible. This combination of animal motif and expressive color language became the actual core of his artistic message and made his work unmistakable from the very beginning.

From 1911 onwards, Marc's artistic development intensified with the founding of the Blauer Reiter together with Wassily Kandinsky, with whom he shared a deep spiritual affinity. The almanac of the same name, which they both published, became one of the most important documents of the European avant-garde. A central feature of Marc's mature work is the increasing abstraction with which he treated his animal motifs. Under the influence of Cubism and Futurism, he broke down the forms of his animals into geometric surfaces and crystalline structures without abandoning the emotional and spiritual intensity of his use of color. His large paintings of horses and his abstract depictions of animals from the last years before the First World War are among the most impressive achievements of German modernism and illustrate his consistent development towards a pictorial language that uses form and color as independent, meaningful means.

In his final years before the outbreak of the First World War, Marc was on the threshold of complete abstraction. His late works show an increasing dissolution of representational form in favour of pure rhythms of color and form, which point his development in a direction that was abruptly ended by his early death. Franz Marc died in the Battle of Verdun in 1916, aged just thirty-six. Today, he is considered one of the central figures of German modernism, whose works are represented in the most important German museums and are highly valued on the international art market, while his luminous animal paintings are among the best-known and most beloved icons of expressionist painting and his early interrupted development is considered one of the great unfinished paths in European art history.