The focus of Franz Marc’s work was of animal subjects and
the idealised spirituality of them. The most striking aspect of Franz Marc’s
paintings is the use of bold, contrasting primary colours. While looking at
animals in a spiritual way, he developed this use of colour to represent
masculinity with blue, femininity and sensuality with yellow, and red with the
material world he was trying to get away from. Along with Kandinsky, he founded
Der Blaue Reiter group in the hope of introducing spiritualism to art. Although
the group had a common sense of spirituality, each individual’s style of art
was very different. This influenced Franz Marc and his group to intensify the
emotions in their pieces which led them to the high point of German
expressionism.
The use of strong colours to convey messages and emotions is
what intrigues me the most about Franz Marc’s work. I am learning to pick out
important aspects of my work and intensify them to convey a message in the
piece. His work has shown me to look deeper than just painting a ‘pretty
picture’ and convey what I really feel about the subject.
