Marc, Franz (1880–1916)

German expressionist painter. He was associated with Wassily Kandinsky in founding the Blaue Reiter movement. Animals played an essential part in his view of the world, and bold semi-abstracts of red and blue animals, particularly horses, are characteristic of his work.

He studied at Munich, and after travel to Italy and Paris was influenced by post-Impressionist art, applying its lessons of colour and design to animal painting and in particular a series of horses. Acquaintance with Kandinsky and Macke in 1910 led to his adopting their free use of brilliant colour, and in 1912 a meeting with Delaunay in Paris added a cubist influence, as in his Roes in the Wood (1913–14; Karlsruhe). His animals were subjective and symbolic creations rather than studies of nature and in this sense he was an expressionist. The trend of his development, cut short by war, was towards abstraction.