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Indepth Arts News:
"Franz Marc and the Blue Rider"
2001-04-08 until 2001-07-15
Walker Art Center
Minneapolis, MN,
USA
During the early years of the 20th century, German painter Franz Marc devoted much
of his artistic energy to creating images of horses and other animals. The allure of
animals was not, for Marc, simply a formal or zoological interest, but stemmed from a
deep fascination with the dynamic connection between animals, humans, and the
natural world they shared. Longing to understand the spirit driving his own being, Marc
looked to the horse in nature to perceive what he could not recognize in the human
world. Through radical compositions and bold experiments with color, he strove to
express the primary energy of the animals.
After Marc encountered the kindred spirits who
would later form the core of the Blue Rider
group--including Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee,
and Alexej Jawlensky--his style matured into a
broader artistic philosophy. The Blue Rider was not
a formal group with a manifesto and strict
membership, but rather a changing network of artists
who exhibited together and shared ideas. One of the
most radical notions they proposed was the
integration of all the arts across media boundaries,
and they actively recruited not only painters and
sculptors but also musicians, composers, writers,
architects, and designers to their ranks. The artificial separation of form and idea, they argued,
could not truthfully express the inner rhythm of the spirit. In their anthology of 1911, the Blue
Rider Almanac, they included articles and essays on contemporary visual arts as well as music,
theater, low arts, and ancient and non-Western cultures that embraced a wide range of
conceptions about the place of art and the spiritual in the modern world.
The exhibition Franz Marc and the Blue Rider
presents works by Marc and 10 of his Blue Rider
colleagues that illuminate their common goals while
making clear their distinct artistic personalities.
Visitors will see several of Marcs masterpieces
from this prolific period, including The Large
Blue Horses (1911), a longtime favorite from the
Walkers permanent collection; two related oils,
The Small Blue Horses (1911) and The Small
Yellow Horses (1912); and the stunning The Red
Horses (1911). A selection of prints and gouaches
by Marc--depicting animals both real and
mythical--illuminates his increasingly abstract
treatment of line, form, and color as he sought to
develop a spiritually expressive art. Blue Rider
cofounder Wassily Kandinsky, the Russian-born
painter who was among the earliest advocates of
pure abstraction, is represented by
eightworks--notably his important Study for Improvisation V (1910), on loan from the
Minneapolis Institute of Arts, and a key 1923 lithograph entitled Orange.
IMAGE:
Franz Marc
The Large Blue Horses
1911
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