Franz Marc: A 'Blue Rider' in Bavaria

Franz Marc was born in Munich in 1880. Even as a child, he spent his holidays in the area around Lake Staffelsee. Later the village of Sindelsdorf would become his summer refuge. In 1914, Franz Marc and his wife Maria moved into a villa in Ried, a district of Kochel am See. Here in the Bavarian countryside people lived in harmony with nature. This simple life inspired much of Franz Marc's work.

Paintings like "Red Deer II" from 1912 broke with the traditional way nature was represented in art. Today they're popular and iconic artworks. Franz Marc felt drawn to nature and demonstrated empathy for animals. His depictions of them used colors, shapes and lines in a way that hadn’t been seen before.

Franz Marc studied painting at Munich's Academy of Fine Arts. In Paris he discovered the painting styles of Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin and Henri Matisse and was fascinated by them. While looking for motifs to paint, he often went for hikes. During this memorial year, two murals Franz Marc painted on the walls of an alpine hut on Rabenkopf mountain can be visited by appointment.

The First World War put a stop to an incredibly productive phase of Franz Marc’s career. The artist was conscripted in August 1914. The letters Marc wrote to his wife Maria from the front are touching testaments to their love. He wrote his last card to her the morning of the day he died. Franz Marc was killed by a piece of shrapnel during the Battle of Verdun in 1916. He was just 36 years old.

Franz Marc is buried in the town he called home: Kochel am See. Since 1986 there's been a museum dedicated to him there. In 2008 an extension was added to the building. In 2016 the museum hosted an exhibition trilogy "Franz Marc - Between Utopia and Apocolypse" as well as various events to mark the centenary of the artist's death.

Franz Marc painted cats, dogs, cows, deer, foxes, tigers and horses. He liked to depict animals and even showed them dreaming. His original "Blue Horse I" (1911), which hangs in the Lenbachhaus art museum in Munich, is symbolic of the progressive energy of the Blue Rider movement. Its artists defied the conventions taught in art schools and opted for more expressive forms, including abstract art.

Painter Gabriele Münter and her partner, Russian artist Wassily Kandinsky, also settled in idyllic Upper Bavaria. Their house in Murnau became a meeting place for avant-garde German and Russian painters. Together with Franz Marc, August Macke, Paul Klee, Alexej von Jawlensky and Marianne von Werefkin they formulated their ideas for a new kind of art in "The Blaue Reiter Almanac."

"Blue is the male principle, stern and spiritual. Yellow the female principle, gentle, cheerful and sensual. Red is matter, brutal and heavy and always the color which must be fought and vanquished by the other two!" That's what Franz Marc wrote to his friend August Macke in 1910. His painting "The Yellow Cow" (1911) has been the property of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation since 1949.

Another one of Franz Marc's legacies is the term "Blaues Land" or "blue country," which he coined to describe the area between Murnau and Kochel. The ever-changing blue tones in the landscape's ambient light are a fascinating sight - and not just for painters. Tours bring visitors to places that were sources of inspiration for the works of "Der Blaue Reiter."