Meier, Andreas

Du (Switzerland), no. 3, 1987, pp. 18-35, 46-7, 92, 19 illus. (6 colour)

Discusses the animal paintings of Franz Marc (1880-1916), with particular reference to his frequent representations of yellow, red and blue horses, which even during his lifetime had already achieved great popularity with the public. The author traces his short but productive career, commenting on the sensitivity and spontaneity of his painting and mentioning his friendship with many other members of the contemporary art scene, including Kandinsky, Klee, August Macke and Jean BloACO NiestlACO.

ROSENTHAL, M.

CONNOISSEUR (U.K.), NO. 815, VOL. 203 (JAN. 1980), P. 24-9. 6 ILLUS.

WITH REFERENCE TO THE EXHIBITION MARKING THE CENTENARY OF MARC'S BIRTH, SHOWN AT THE UNIVERSITY ART MUSEUM, BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA (JAN.-FEB. 1980), THE AUTHOR TRACES THE DEVELOPMENT OF HIS ART WITH PARTICULAR REFERENCE TO HIS INTEREST IN AND USE OF ANIMALS AS SYMBOLS, PARTICULARLY HORSES. THE WAY IN WHICH HE COMBINED THIS ANIMAL SYMBOLISM WITH COLOUR SYMBOLISM IS BRIEFLY ANALYSED AND HIS SPIRITUALISTIC AIMS LINKED TO THOSE OF THE BLAUER REITER. THE AUTHOR COMMENTS THAT AS MARC'S WORK BECAME MORE ABSTRACT, HIS PANTHEISTIC OUTLOOK MODIFIED AND THE ABSTRACT MODE EFFECTIVELY UNITED THE ANIMALS WITH THEIR ENVIRONMENT WHILE REDUCING THE MELODRAMA EVIDENT IN THE EARLIER WORK. THE ARTICLE CONCLUDES WITH A BRIEF DISCUSSION OF HIS WORK DURING THE FIRST WORLD WAR.

LEVINE, F. S.

ART BULLETIN (U.S.A.), VOL. 58, NO. 2 (JUNE 1976), P. 269-77. 3 ILLUS.

A DISCUSSION OF THE NATURE AND COMPOSITION OF MARC'S 'FATE OF THE ANIMALS' AND OF THE BROADER IMPLICATIONS OF THE APOCALYPSE THEME. THE AUTHOR CONSIDERS THE MEANING OF THE TITLES, THE STRUCTURAL FOUNDATION OF THE WORK, THE CONCEPT OF TRANSPARENCY, THE LITERARY SOURCES THAT INFLUENCED MARC, THE INFLUENCE OF THE MURAL OF 'THE THREE NORNS' BY ERNST EWALD AND THE ULTIMATE MEANING OF MARC'S WORK.

LEVINE, F. S.

IN: FRANZ MARC 1880-1916, EDITED BY R. GOLLEK, P. 74-94. 23 ILLUS. BIBLIOG.

AN EXTENSIVE ANALYSIS OF THE MOTIF OF THE BIRD IN MARC'S PAINTINGS AND DRAWINGS, WITH PARTICULAR REFERENCE TO THE INFLUENCE OF HIS FRIEND AND COLLEAGUE JEAN BLOE NIESTLE AS WELL AS TO WORKS OF ILLUSTRATORS FROM THE MIDDLE AGES. MARC'S TREATMENT OF THE THEME FROM 1905 ONWARDS IS DISCUSSED WITH HIS ARTISTIC DEVELOPMENT AS A WHOLE AND THE EVOLUTION OF EXPRESSIONISM.

LANGNER, J.

IN: FRANZ MARC 1880-1916, EDITED BY R. GOLLEK, P. 50-73. 44 ILLUS. BIBLIOG.

THE AUTHOR ANALYSES THE DEPICTION OF THE HUMAN FIGURE AND OF ANIMALS BY FRANZ MARC, STRESSING THE SIMILARITY OF THEIR COMPOSITION.

Lista, Marcella

Chicago Art Journal (U.S.A.), vol. 10, Spring 2000, pp. 1-22, 6 illus. bibliog

Discusses the German artist Franz Marc's development of an individualistic style of abstraction using animal imagery between 1910 and his death in 1916 in the First World War. The author explains that the ascendancy subsequently achieved by the abstract styles of Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944) and Piet Mondrian (1872-1944) have tended to obscure the fact that, in the 1910s, abstraction was an emerging phenomenon open to a wide range of artistic interpretations. She traces the origins of Marc's interest in using the animal world as a source of symbolism and imagery with which to express through art universal truths back to his encounter c.1905 with the work of the Swiss animal painter Jean Bloe Niestle and of Paul Gauguin, and of the writings of Reinhard Piper. She considers his use of the colours blue and yellow within the context of the Blaue Reiter and observes that Marc's paintings combined animal symbolism and geometric abstraction. Subsequently, his painting was influenced stylistically by the work of the French artist Robert Delaunay (1885-1941), who pursued the concept of pure painting; and in terms of its content and philosophical agenda by the book Abstraktion und Einfuhlung by Wilhelm Worringer, which upheld a link between expression and spirituality through abstraction and ornament. The author places her account within the context of Marc's interest in the related themes of apocalypse, destruction, and historical culmination.

WOLF, M.

ART JOURNAL (U.S.A.), VOL. 33, NO. 3 (SPRING 1974), P. 226-30. 7 ILLUS. BIBLIOG.

IN REVIEWING A SHOW AT THE GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM, NEW YORK, 'ARTISTS RESPOND TO CRISIS', ONE CRITIC OBJECTED TO THE INCLUSION OF FRANZ MARC'S PAINTING 'THE UNFORTUNATE LAND OF TYROL' (1913), CLAIMING IT WAS IRRELEVANT. BUT BENEATH ITS SURFACE PLEASANTNESS SMOULDERS AN OMINOUS FOREBODING, A PREMONITION OF THE BATTLE TO COME. MARC'S CHARACTERISTIC PAINTINGS WERE CONCERNED WITH SYMBOLIC COLOURS AND BOLD, CONFIDENT ANIMALS. WITH THE IMPENDING WAR, HOWEVER, THESE ANIMALS GRADUALLY CHANGED. THE TWO HORSES IN THE PAINTING MENTIONED ABOVE HAVE BEEN REDUCED TO MERE BYSTANDERS, IN ACCORDANCE WITH THEIR INSIGNIFICANCE IN THE SCHEME OF THE UNIVERSE. NOT ONLY IS THIS PAINTING A 'RESPONSE TO CRISIS', BUT MARC'S ENTIRE OEUVRE CONSTITUTES A RESPONSE TO THE UNIVERSAL CRISIS, THE 'CONDITION HUMAINE'. IN THE CURRENT ERA OF FRAGMENTED CULTURE, AS IN THEIR OWN TIME, THEY ASSERT IN THE AUTHOR'S VIEW THE COMMON BOND OF ALL CREATION, AND FUNCTION AS A TIMELESS 'BIBLIA OMNII'.

Baum, Marlene

MA14nster (Germany), vol. 50, no. 1, 1997, pp. 48-55, (5 colour) bibliog

Examines the application and significance of the horse and rider motif in works by the Russian artist Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944) and by the German artist Franz Marc (1880-1916). The author discusses the traditional symbolism of the horse and the reasons for the artists' adoption of the name Blaue Reiter for their spiritually orientated aesthetic movement. She refers to series of works by Kandinsky which depict horses with their riders such as Der heilige Georg (1911), Improvation 3 (1909) and front covers for the Almanach der Blaue Reiter, and she contrasts these with portrayals of riderless horses by Marc such as Turm der blauen Pferde (1913).

ARTNER, T.

BUDAPEST: CORVINA; DISTRIBUTED IN THE U.K. BY CLEMATIS PRESS (1982), 93PP. ISBN 963-13-1466-9. 48 ILLUS.

TRANSLATION OF THE BOOK PUBLISHED AS 'LO ES LOVAS A MUESZETBEN' BY CORVINA (1982). IT SURVEYS THE DEPICTION OF HORSES AND THEIR RIDERS IN ART, WITH ILLUSTRATIONS FROM PREHISTORIC CAVE PAINTINGS TO THE 20TH CENTURY. THE INTRODUCTION DISCUSSES CHANGES IN REPRESENTATION, NOTING PAINTINGS BY SANDOR WAGNER, KAROLY LOTZ, AUGUST VON PETTENKOFFEN, GIOVANNI SEGANTINI, HANS VON MAREES, JEAN-LOUIS-ERNEST MEISSONIER, GERICAULT, DEGAS, TOULOUSE-LAUTREC, GAUGUIN, KANDINSKY, MARC AND ALFRED MUNNINGS; SCULPTURES BY CONSTANTIN MEUNIER, REINHOLD BEGAS, GYORGY ZALA, ANTON FERNKORN, JANOS PASZTOR, EMILE ANTOINE BOURDELLE AND ANTON AUGUSTINCIC; ILLUSTRATIONS AND DRAWINGS BY DORE, DAUMIER, DALI AND HANS ERNI; AND WOODCUTS BY ALFRED RETHEL.

GERCKE, H.

KUNSTWERK (G.F.R.), VOL. 33, NO. 4 (1980), P. 3-47. 51 ILLUS.

BROAD SURVEY OF THE HANDLING AND TREATMENT OF ANIMALS IN CONTEMPORARY ART STIMULATED BY TWO EVENTS: THE 100TH ANNIVERSARY OF FRANZ MARC'S BIRTH, QUOTED AS FINDING ANIMALS AS 'PURER AND MORE BEAUTIFUL' THAN MAN WHOM HE THOUGHT OF AS 'HATEFUL'; AND AN EXHIBITION STAGED BY THE HEIDELBERG ART UNION (20 JULY-14 SEPT. 1980). AS WELL AS PROVIDING SOME HISTORICAL BACKGROUND AND DOCUMENTATION - CAVE-PAINTINGS, THE WORK OF BREUGHEL AND THE DEIFICATION OF ANIMALS BY THE EGYPTIANS ETC. - THE AUTHOR ATTEMPTS TO EXPLAIN WHAT IT IS THAT PROMPTS SOME CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS TO CHOOSE ANIMALS AS THEIR SUBJECTS TOGETHER WITH DETAILS OF A FEW BASIC CHARACTERISTICS OF THEIR WORK.

Hecht, Axel

ART: das Kunstmagazin (Germany), no. 4, April 2001, pp. 58, 2 illus. (1 colour)

Discusses the circumstances surrounding the disappearance of the painting Turm der Blauen Pferde (1913; col. illus.) by the German Expressionist artist Franz Marc. The author highlights the absence of the work from the exhibition Franz Marc-Pferde at the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart in Stuttgart (27 May-10 Sept. 2000), and comments on the widespread belief, held also by Marc's chief biographer Klaus Lankheit, that the painting went missing in 1945. He explains that the collector of Expressionist art, Jan A. Ahlers refers in a recent interview (see this issue of ABM for abstract) to the location of the work in a Zurich bank safe, and expresses the hope that it, as an alleged case of war booty, can be returned to the Nationalgalerie in Berlin, from where it was removed to appear in the exhibition Entartete Kunst (1937). He notes that the work was later assimilated into the collection of Hermann Goring, and was last seen at the Haus am Waldsee in Berlin shortly after the end of the War.

Schmidt, Ernst GA14nther

Bildende Kunst (G.D.R.), vol. 35, no. 3, 1987, pp. 116-18, 3 illus. bibliog

The article sheds new light on Franz Marc's influential 1913 masterpiece Tower of the Blue Horses, which disappeared during the years of the Third Reich. A picture in the M. K. Ciurlionis Museum in Kaunas, Lithuania (a veritable treasure-house, the author says, of 19th and 20th century German painting) is identified as an early oil study for the lost work. The author maintains that although not mentioned in any of the literature or catalogues of Marc's work, the painting is undoubtedly authentic. He discusses the picture's probable history, its implications and relationship with the other known versions of the work.

Roalf, Peggy

London: Belitha Press. 1994, 48 pp. Looking at Paintings series, 40 illus. (21 colour) ISBN: 1-85561-348-4

Traces the history of the depiction of cats in art and considers how the ways in which they are depicted represents not only contemporary attitudes towards the cat, but also the social and political background to the piece. The author provides a short commentary on each work, providing details on the artist and medium as well as on the appearance of the cat and the circumstances (where known) in which the painting or drawing was created. Artists whose work is discussed include: ThACOophile-Alexandre Steinlen, John Tenniel, Kipling, Renoir, Wilhelm Busch, Cecilia Beaux, Gauguin, Cassatt, Bonnard, Chagall, Franz Marc, Calder, Klee, Picasso, George Tooker, Will Barnet, Hockney, and Franz Kline.

Wappenschmidt, Friederike

Weltkunst (Germany), vol. 64, no. 18, 15 Sept. 1994, pp. 2362-3, 4 illus. (1 colour)

Discusses the portrayal of the dog in Western fine art and craft from antiquity to the 20th century. The author examines the depiction of the dog as the companion of the ruling classes, and explains how fashions in breeds were immortalized in a wide range of materials. He concludes that it was not until the emergence of work by artists such as Franz Marc (1880-1916) that the representation of the separate and autonomous consciousness of the dog and other animals was considered possible.

HALL, J.

LONDON: JOHN MURRAY (1984), XXIX+349PP. ISBN 0-7195-2984-0. ILLUS. BIBLIOG.

REVISED EDITION OF THE BOOK FIRST PUBLISHED IN 1974 (SEE ABM 6 1769 FOR ABSTRACT). A SUPPLEMENTARY INDEX PROVIDES REFERENCES TO SUCH MATTERS AS RELIGIOUS BELIEFS, IDEAS AND SOCIAL CUSTOMS MENTIONED IN THE ENTRIES, AND ALSO INCLUDES A NUMBER OF EXTRA LISTINGS FOR IDENTIFYING OBJECTS OMITTED FROM THE FIRST EDITION.