Franz Marc (1880-1916)

Franz Marc was a German Expressionist painter who, like August Macke, went to France as part of his training as an artist and was influenced by what the French impressionists were doing.  He is known for his paintings of animals, as this painting to the right demonstrates.
He had many alliances in his short life.  Marc worked with Macke and then Kandinsky.  They split from the Neue Künstlervereinigung in 1911, forming a rival group of artists named Der Blaue Reiter. Together they edited an almanac of the same name, which was published in 1912. Having long been interested in Eastern philosophies and religions, Marc responded enthusiastically to Kandinsky’s notion that art should lay bare the spiritual essence of natural forms instead of copying their objective appearance. Kandinsky and Marc developed the idea that mystical energy is best revealed through abstraction. Marc believed that civilization destroys humanity's  awareness of the spiritual force of nature; consequently, he usually painted animals.  Like Macke, he was killed on the battlefield in France in WWI.