Franz Marc

Today in class we learned about the painter and print maker Franz Marc. He was born in Germany in 1880. As a young artist, he was influenced by Vincent Van Gogh, and that influence is clearly visible in his early work.

He was a part of the German Expressionist movement, along with Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Edward Munch. (Munch made the iconic painting "The Scream.") Expressionists distorted reality in their paintings in order to show emotion. They used exaggerated forms and arbitrary color. Arbitrary color refers to the seemingly random, unnatural color choices.

German Expressionist Portraits- Various Artists -unifying theme of distortion and expression

 Franz Marc, along with Wassily Kandinsky and August Macke formed the Blue Rider group. The group got its name from an early painting of Kandinsky's where a man is seen riding a blue horse. This group believed in expressing their artistic ideas even if their style was different from everyone else. The symbol of the horseman stood for art "moving forward" to the modern era, and the color blue represented the human spirit.

 Marc

Franz Marc lost his life in World War One. An order was sent to remove him from the front lines and re-assign him to a safer position, since he German government didn't want to lose such a valuable painter - he had celebrity status, just about. Before the order could reach him, however, he was tragically killed in action.

Marc

Can you see the Van Gogh inspiration in this early painting by Marc?

Check out these others. What can you see is the same in all of these?

Marc

Check out this transcription, looking at one of Marc's paintings. I made this my sophomore year of high school.

I was in such a fluster today, since this was the first day of class, so I forgot to take pictures. I normally snap a few shots as the kids work. The class did really wonderful things today! I'm really proud of them. Here's a couple pictures of the work that was left behind to dry. Can you see the inspiration? The arbitrary use of color?

And tomorrow, we learn about Claude Monet!