Lot Essay
Springendes Pferd not only testifies to Marc's profound love of animals and his evocative use of colour, but also to his unique interpretation of the European avant-garde, which began with the work of Robert Delaunay and developed to embrace the Italian Futurists.
Marc's sensitive depictions of horses in a landscape are widely recognised as the most characteristic and personal subjects in his oeuvre. In December 1908 he famously declared that he was working "towards an animalization of art" and further "people with their lack of piety, especially men, never touched my true feelings. But animals with their virginal sense of life awakened all that is good in me" (quoted in H. B. Chipp, Theories of Modern Art, Berkeley, 1968, p. 182).
It is clear that Marc was especially interested in capturing the movement of a horse as depicted in the present work as he experimented with the motif in a design for an exhibition poster of 1910 and on two postcards of April 1913 (figs. 4, 1 & 2 respectively). His poster design for the Das Tier in der Kunst exhibition held at the Galerie Thannhauser, Munich in 1910 clearly shows the influence of Delacroix, and specifically his watercolour Cheval effrayé par l'Orage of 1824 in the Budapest Museum of Fine Arts, in the florid movements of the horse's mane and tail. By 1913 Marc's approach had matured to a more elegant style as can be seen on the postcards written in April to the poet Else Lasker-Schüler and to Wassily Kandinsky (L. nos. 753 & 752), which are housed in the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Munich and the Städtische Galerie, Munich.
Springendes Pferd reveals the emphatic understanding of colour which Marc developed following his encounters with August Macke in 1910, and with Kandinksy a year later. Like Kandinsky, he developed a personal symbolism for the use of colour, ascribing spirituality and maleness to blue, femininity and sensuality to yellow and materiality to red. "Every colour must say clearly 'who' and 'what' it is, and must, moreover, be related to a clear form" (A. Macke & F. Marc, Briefwechsel, Cologne, 1964, p. 28).
The fractured, coloured planes in the present work recall Marc's visit to Paris with August Macke in the Autumn of 1912 when they met Robert Delaunay. Delaunay's pioneering exploitation of colour and angular, prismatic cubist planes was to exert a powerful influence on the German Expressionists. The trip may well have been prompted by the first Blaue Reiter exhibition held at Galerie Thannhauser in Munich from December 1911 to January 1912. Works by Marc, Macke, Kandinsky and Campendonk hung alongside five by Delaunay.
However, Springendes Pferd is most significant for the way in which it reveals Marc's interpretation of the work of the Italian Futurists. The curving lines of the horse's body, and the rhythmic curves radiating through the work convey a forceful impression of power and movement. On 12 April 1912, Berlin was taken by storm by the Futurist exhibition mounted at Herwath Walden's celebrated Der Sturm Gallery which included paintings by Severini, Balla, Boccioni and Marc.
Marc would undoubtedly have read the 'Technical Manifesto of Futurist Painting' signed by Giacomo Balla, Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carrà, Luigi Russolo and Gino Severini, which Walden published in his Der Sturm periodical in March 1912. Springendes Pferd reflects the view expressed in the manifesto "...everything moves, everything runs, everything is being rapidly transformed. Given the continuation of the image on the retina, objects and movement multiply themselves like vibrations launched into the space which they traverse. Thus a trotting horse has not four legs, but twenty, and their movements are triangular" (see P. Selz, German Expressionist Painting, Los Angeles, 1957, p. 258).
As Serge Fauchereau explains "During 1912, Marc was deeply impressed by a Futurist exhibition at the Der Sturm Gallery, and he met Delaunay in the same year. Up to this time, Marc had painted in a jagged, muscular style, reminiscent of Fauvism, but now, influenced by both movements, without abandoning the animal theme, his paintings and woodcuts became structurally even more dynamic and complex. His use of colour, already entirely subjective, took on a new Futurist strength and born from a vision marked by an intense vitality, his paintings between 1912 and 1915 literally exploded in jets of colour" (S. Fauchereau, Futurismo & Futurismi, exh. cat., Venice, 1986, p. 510).
Emil Nolde recognised the influence of Futurism on Marc's painting when he wrote: "Franz Marc had painted his simple groups of deer and animals without any tendency toward mannerism; now he became almost suddenly constructive, cubistic, almost to the unrecognisability of the animals represented. Was this the new emerging time? These great configurations of rays, curvatures, lines and prismatic colours?" (E. Nolde, Jahre der Kämpfe, p. 150).
The significance of Springendes Pferd is shown by the fact that it was one of just six works by Marc to be included in the pivotal XXXXIII. Ausstellung: Expressionisten, Futuristen, Kubisten exhibition mounted by the Der Sturm Gallery in 1916. Amongst other leading artists represented in the exhibition were Campendonk, Severini, Léger, Klee, Kandinsky and Feininger. In the same year the present work also appeared in the major retrospective exhibition of Marc's work organised by the Munich Sezession in 1916.
Marc's sensitive depictions of horses in a landscape are widely recognised as the most characteristic and personal subjects in his oeuvre. In December 1908 he famously declared that he was working "towards an animalization of art" and further "people with their lack of piety, especially men, never touched my true feelings. But animals with their virginal sense of life awakened all that is good in me" (quoted in H. B. Chipp, Theories of Modern Art, Berkeley, 1968, p. 182).
It is clear that Marc was especially interested in capturing the movement of a horse as depicted in the present work as he experimented with the motif in a design for an exhibition poster of 1910 and on two postcards of April 1913 (figs. 4, 1 & 2 respectively). His poster design for the Das Tier in der Kunst exhibition held at the Galerie Thannhauser, Munich in 1910 clearly shows the influence of Delacroix, and specifically his watercolour Cheval effrayé par l'Orage of 1824 in the Budapest Museum of Fine Arts, in the florid movements of the horse's mane and tail. By 1913 Marc's approach had matured to a more elegant style as can be seen on the postcards written in April to the poet Else Lasker-Schüler and to Wassily Kandinsky (L. nos. 753 & 752), which are housed in the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Munich and the Städtische Galerie, Munich.
Springendes Pferd reveals the emphatic understanding of colour which Marc developed following his encounters with August Macke in 1910, and with Kandinksy a year later. Like Kandinsky, he developed a personal symbolism for the use of colour, ascribing spirituality and maleness to blue, femininity and sensuality to yellow and materiality to red. "Every colour must say clearly 'who' and 'what' it is, and must, moreover, be related to a clear form" (A. Macke & F. Marc, Briefwechsel, Cologne, 1964, p. 28).
The fractured, coloured planes in the present work recall Marc's visit to Paris with August Macke in the Autumn of 1912 when they met Robert Delaunay. Delaunay's pioneering exploitation of colour and angular, prismatic cubist planes was to exert a powerful influence on the German Expressionists. The trip may well have been prompted by the first Blaue Reiter exhibition held at Galerie Thannhauser in Munich from December 1911 to January 1912. Works by Marc, Macke, Kandinsky and Campendonk hung alongside five by Delaunay.
However, Springendes Pferd is most significant for the way in which it reveals Marc's interpretation of the work of the Italian Futurists. The curving lines of the horse's body, and the rhythmic curves radiating through the work convey a forceful impression of power and movement. On 12 April 1912, Berlin was taken by storm by the Futurist exhibition mounted at Herwath Walden's celebrated Der Sturm Gallery which included paintings by Severini, Balla, Boccioni and Marc.
Marc would undoubtedly have read the 'Technical Manifesto of Futurist Painting' signed by Giacomo Balla, Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carrà, Luigi Russolo and Gino Severini, which Walden published in his Der Sturm periodical in March 1912. Springendes Pferd reflects the view expressed in the manifesto "...everything moves, everything runs, everything is being rapidly transformed. Given the continuation of the image on the retina, objects and movement multiply themselves like vibrations launched into the space which they traverse. Thus a trotting horse has not four legs, but twenty, and their movements are triangular" (see P. Selz, German Expressionist Painting, Los Angeles, 1957, p. 258).
As Serge Fauchereau explains "During 1912, Marc was deeply impressed by a Futurist exhibition at the Der Sturm Gallery, and he met Delaunay in the same year. Up to this time, Marc had painted in a jagged, muscular style, reminiscent of Fauvism, but now, influenced by both movements, without abandoning the animal theme, his paintings and woodcuts became structurally even more dynamic and complex. His use of colour, already entirely subjective, took on a new Futurist strength and born from a vision marked by an intense vitality, his paintings between 1912 and 1915 literally exploded in jets of colour" (S. Fauchereau, Futurismo & Futurismi, exh. cat., Venice, 1986, p. 510).
Emil Nolde recognised the influence of Futurism on Marc's painting when he wrote: "Franz Marc had painted his simple groups of deer and animals without any tendency toward mannerism; now he became almost suddenly constructive, cubistic, almost to the unrecognisability of the animals represented. Was this the new emerging time? These great configurations of rays, curvatures, lines and prismatic colours?" (E. Nolde, Jahre der Kämpfe, p. 150).
The significance of Springendes Pferd is shown by the fact that it was one of just six works by Marc to be included in the pivotal XXXXIII. Ausstellung: Expressionisten, Futuristen, Kubisten exhibition mounted by the Der Sturm Gallery in 1916. Amongst other leading artists represented in the exhibition were Campendonk, Severini, Léger, Klee, Kandinsky and Feininger. In the same year the present work also appeared in the major retrospective exhibition of Marc's work organised by the Munich Sezession in 1916.