Franz Marc is a well-known German expressionist painter, who founded together with V. Kandinsky almanac, and then the association “The Blue Rider”. The creative path of Franz Mark is very ambiguous, for the short life he passed very different stages.
Initially, he sought the source of maximum proximity to nature and, consequently, the highest sensuality and sincerity in images of animals. It was in this that he found “… the influx of fresh blood in nature…”. The search for new ways of expression brings Mark to the avant-gardists, with whom he participates in the creation of the magazine Pan. The creative search of the artist is due to the desire to penetrate the essence of things, to see the “spiritual side of nature” beyond the boundaries of material visibility.
Initially, Mark seeks to escape from civilization into the world of wildlife, but gradually he begins to suffer here with an abundance of carnal. Realistic images of animals are becoming more and more his schematic. This is how the transition of Mark’s creativity from “cesannism to expressionism” takes place. In the end, the images of animals are transformed into completely abstract images that give rise to the artist’s own world.
One of the “transitional” paintings of the Mark is the painting “Red Horses”. Some schematic composition does not diminish the sense of reality of the image – three horses full of internal vigorous energy. Although the style of this work is already reminiscent of a rhythmic arabesque for its decorative, close to the fauvists and expressionists, it is still a “live” natural painting. The red color is an expression of the highest natural sensuality in the sensation of the artist. Strength and uncontrollability of wildlife Pass the pulse of life, its sincerity in a form untouched by man.
In subsequent works, real images of animals are gradually filled with “glass” transparency, the lines create geometric silhouettes. In the work of 1914 “The Fight of Forms” Mark already appears as an absolute abstractionist.
The Blue Rider Association was created in 1911 by Mark and V. Kandinsky and existed until 1914. The original name was coined by the founders: both Kandinsky and Mark preferred the blue color; the first found colorful riders, the second all his life adored horses. To a certain extent, the need for such an association has existed for several years, but only the refusal of the official exhibition “Munich Secession” to accept the work of avant-gardists showed the impossibility of artists of the new direction to exist as part of the “generally accepted” painting.
New art went beyond reality, it began to exist according to its own laws in its own, created by the instinct and hand of the artist world. Mark himself wrote that the modernists portrayed “things hidden under cover of visibility.” The mystery of being, the unknowable essence of everything interested and the artists of the Blue Rider. It is believed that the first abstract picture was written by Mark’s friend – V. Kandinsky in 1910.
The path of the artists of the new association, which began from expressionism, gradually, under the influence of its leaders, passes on to more and more rebellious and revolutionary methods of self-expression and self-search, sometimes on the verge of “non-art”. The works made by the participants of the Blue Rider are filled with bright colors, symbolic and purely decorative elements. This is very clearly manifested in the canvas of the Mark “Tower of Blue Horses”, unfortunately, not preserved and accessible to viewers only in photographs. If Kandinsky developed emotional, “amorphous” abstractivism, then Mark eventually moved into the direction of geometric abstraction. Artist Franz Marc died tragically at Verdun at the age of 36.
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