Lot Essay
Despite the avant-garde influences which he readily absorbed during his trips to Paris before 1910, Marc felt his painting lacked an essential unity. His friendship with Kandinsky in Munich helped him to integrate subject, form and color, and in January, 1910, he met August Macke, who had already mastered the problem of color, with which Marc still struggled. In this dynamic environment, Marc's painting evolved quickly. For Marc the animal set in a landscape was the embodiment of a cosmic rhythm and this theme provided his most characteristic imagery. In order to identify with nature completely, Marc rendered form and color more abstractly, and developed his own color symbolism, by which he sought to penetrate visual reality to the "other side."
Marc met Delaunay in 1912, as did Klee and Macke, and under the influence of Delaunay, Kandinsky and the Futurists, Marc's art became progressively abstract.
Very early in life I found man ugly; the animal seemed to me more beautiful and cleaner, but even in it I discovered so much that was repelling and ugly that my art instinctively and by inner force became more schematic and abstract. (F. Marc, in P. Selz, German Expressionist Painting, Berkeley, 1957, p. 225)
Abstraktes Aquarell I, from the artist's Skizzenbuch XXX, displays all three influences. The use of pure prismatic color, inter-woven forms and circular structures derive from Delaunay; the repetitive forms echo Futurism, and throughout Marc follows Kandinsky's example in an abstract departure from the object; in this case, a reference to the elongated form of a swan, heron or other bird, a symbol of prophecy and vision. In his abstract works Marc most clearly approaches his pantheistic ideals.
Marc met Delaunay in 1912, as did Klee and Macke, and under the influence of Delaunay, Kandinsky and the Futurists, Marc's art became progressively abstract.
Very early in life I found man ugly; the animal seemed to me more beautiful and cleaner, but even in it I discovered so much that was repelling and ugly that my art instinctively and by inner force became more schematic and abstract. (F. Marc, in P. Selz, German Expressionist Painting, Berkeley, 1957, p. 225)
Abstraktes Aquarell I, from the artist's Skizzenbuch XXX, displays all three influences. The use of pure prismatic color, inter-woven forms and circular structures derive from Delaunay; the repetitive forms echo Futurism, and throughout Marc follows Kandinsky's example in an abstract departure from the object; in this case, a reference to the elongated form of a swan, heron or other bird, a symbol of prophecy and vision. In his abstract works Marc most clearly approaches his pantheistic ideals.