The horses are stacked one above the other, on an ascending, vertical plane, eschewing depth altogether. Here, he depicts four blue horses, possibly representing the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse from the book of Revelation. This painting is another example of Marc's apocalyptic fears. Oil on canvas - Kunstmuseum Basel, Basel, Switzerland Since destruction was a necessary step before society could be rebuilt, this powerful image could be read as not only tragedy and decimation, but as progress. What's more, the fact that Marc borrowed from the Futurists in his painting style suggests that he had a positive view of the destruction he depicted. That Marc chose to place this symbol of hope in the center foreground of the composition, suggests that he himself had a hopeful vision of the future. A blue deer, symbolizing hope, stands in the center foreground, twisting away from the falling tree that threatens to crush it. Despite the chaos and destruction of the work, Marc manages to create a balanced and ordered composition. Ultimately, this is an apocalyptic vision of the looming war. All of the animals are panicked, their faces and bodies contorted to express the terror of trying to escape their inescapable demise. Fires rain down from above and fallen trees jut out of the still hot embers of the underbrush. Fantasy is still an important feature in this work, but in this case the fantasy has turned dark and foreboding. Indeed, Marc shows the world being utterly ripped apart. The image serves as a premonition of the horrors of war. The sharp angles and jagged shapes of the composition convey Marc's more jaded view of the relationship between man and nature. The Fate of the Animals is a vision of annihilation as seen through the eyes of the animals. The repetition of color and line throughout reverberate with a sense of energy as well as safety and happiness. The blue hills in the background echo the shape of the cow's haunches. The cow dominates the foreground of the dreamlike composition, exuding a mood of blissful serenity as it leaps over the rocky landscape in the foreground. Marc also uses color and line repetition with the large yellow cow. This is most evident in the small herd of red cows grouped together at the left of the composition they are camouflaged, blending into the rocky, red landscape around them. His repetition of color connects the animals with their background. The combination of the two colors, then, indicates a merging of masculine and feminine, in a reference to his marriage to Franck. The blue spots on its hide represent the masculine, since he viewed blue as evoking masculine emotions. The large yellow cow represents the feminine, since Marc saw the color yellow as evoking feminine emotions. Marc built upon van Gogh's emotional use of color, by using colors to humanize natural forms in the landscape, emphasizing his own interest in pantheism. Van Gogh used color to represent emotion, but in his paintings identifiable features of the natural world remained. This composition is an early example of his use of color symbolism, a technique that had been pioneered by van Gogh, and by his friend August Macke. The cow represents the safety and security Marc felt in this, his second, marriage. Oil on canvas - Franz Marc Museum, Kochel am See, GermanyĪfter marrying Maria Franck in 1911, Marc painted The Yellow Cow as an homage to their union. This is one of the most visible techniques Marc employs to draw connections between the human body and nature. The repetition of lines, a style that would be prevalent in Marc's later work, is evident in the curved outlines of Maria Franck's reclining body, which are echoed by the curve of the hillside directly behind her. He used expressive, linear brushstrokes to depict the bodies of the two women, and the landscape is made up only of broad bands of color that only vaguely suggest depth on the flat plane of the canvas. Stylistically, the work is a fascinating hybrid of the loose brush strokes and flattened space of the Post-Impressionists and the greater abstraction that artists like Marc and other German expressionists would explore in the coming years.

It is one of Marc's first attempts to depict a harmonious relationship between humans and nature, a theme that would only grow stronger over the course of his brief career. The painting depicts two fellow artists, Maria Schnur and Maria Franck, both of whom would also become his wives at different times.

His Two Women on the Hillside (1906) is an excellent example of this new stylistic interest. After travelling to Paris in 1903, where he studied the works of the Post-Impressionists, Marc's style started to show a greater interest in color and form, with less attention paid to realism.

Franz marc ausmalbilder