The Tower of Blue Horses
The Tower of Blue Horses | |
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Artist | Franz Marc |
Year | 1913 |
Medium | oil on canvas |
Dimensions | 200 cm × 130 cm (79 in × 51 in) |
The Tower of Blue Horses (German: Der Turm der blauen Pferde) is a 1913 oil painting by the German Expressionist artist Franz Marc. It has been called one of his best works, but went missing in 1945.
Description
The Tower of Blue Horses was a large work, 200 by 130 centimetres (6 ft 7 in × 4 ft 3 in).[1] Most of the picture is occupied by a frontal view of four primarily blue horses, arranged in a tier to the right of centre, facing the viewer but with their heads turned to the left; the foremost horse seemed "only a little less than life size" to at least one writer.[2] To the left of their rumps, which form the centre of the picture, is an abstract landscape; above it is an orange rainbow on a yellow background. The foremost horse has a crescent moon on its chest, and crosses on its body which suggest stars.[2]
History
Marc created the painting in summer 1913.[3] A preliminary sketch in ink and gouache survives in the form of a new year's postcard for that year to the poet Else Lasker-Schüler, one of 28 painted postcards which the artist sent to her and which she answered in illustrated letters later used in her novel Malik. The Blue Horses sketch uses her favourite colour, blue, and personal symbols of hers, the Moon and stars.[4] This is now in the Munich State Graphics Collection. The large-format painting was one of seven works by Marc exhibited that autumn in the First German Autumn Salon (Erster Deutscher Herbstsalon).[5]
Marc died in 1916, during World War I. After the war, The Tower of Blue Horses was one of the works by Marc acquired for the new contemporary annexe of the Berlin National Gallery housed in the Kronprinzenpalais. It was removed from there as part of the "cleansing" of modern art works under the Nazis, and included in the Degenerate Art exhibition which opened in July 1937 in Munich. However, in response to a protest by veterans because Marc had died fighting for his country in the war, the painting was removed and was not included in the exhibition when it opened in Berlin.[6][7] At that time it was valued at 80,000 Reichsmarks. In spring 1936, now valued at 20,000 RM, it was then transferred to Hermann Göring's custody as part of a select group of valuable modernist paintings which also included two other works by Marc.[8][9] Göring sold at least some of these at a considerable profit, but appears not to have sold The Tower of Blue Horses, which went missing at war's end.
Reception and significance
The Tower of Blue Horses is one of several animal paintings by Marc, among which a large group depict horses. It is one of the most notable of those in which he attempts to "see and paint through [the animal's] eyes", or as Paul Klee put it, "he raises them to his own level".[15] It deeply impressed many viewers; one wrote: "[The painting] holds us spellbound ... A group of four horses lights up before our eyes like a vision ... The mighty body of the foremost animal ... seems to emerge from the depths and stop immediately in front of the viewer".[16] The tightly knit composition of the work with its geometric structure and the use of colour—with the transparency of stained glass, and with decreasing saturation as the eye travels upwards—sets up a powerful upwards movement.[17]
In a 1921 lecture at
See also
References
- ISBN 9783822856444, p. 44 caption.
- ^ a b c Partsch, p. 47.
- ^ Partsch, p. 95.
- ^ Partsch, p. 67.
- .
- ISBN 9780679400691, p. 22.
- ISBN 9780807822401, p. 57.
- ^ Petropoulos, p. 79, note 18, p. 336.
- ^ Art: Das Kunstmagazin, May 2001, p. 8 (in German)
- ^ Joachim Nawrocki, "Die Blauen Pferde - Görings letzte Gefangene: WELT-Autor Joachim Nawrocki ist sicher: 'Ich sah Franz Marcs Gemälde noch Ende der vierziger Jahre in Berlin-Zehlendorf'", Die Welt, 3 March 2001 (in German)
- ^ Stefan Koldehoff, "Auf der Jagd nach Görings verlorenem Schatz: Nächste Woche wird in London ein Gemälde von Lucas Cranach versteigert. Prominenter Vorbesitzer: Hermann Göring. Noch immer sind viele Werke aus der Sammlung des Reichsfeldmarschalls verschollen. Wurden sie bei Kriegsende zerstört - oder lagern sie in russischen Spezialdepots?", Die Welt, 4 July 2010 (in German)
- ISBN 9783640785957, p. 8.
- ^ Stefan Koldehoff, "Nazi-Gemälderaub: Kunst und Kriegsverbrecher", 3. Teil: "Haben noch mehr verschollen geglaubte Bilder den Krieg überlebt?", Monopol, Der Spiegel, 3 September 2007 (in German)
- ^ Quoted in Koldehoff: "Ich dachte, dann kommt vielleicht ein Mütterlein aus dem Ost-Erzgebirge zu mir ins Büro, rollt eine Leinwand aus, und heraus rieseln die blauen Farbkristalle."
- ^ Partsch, p. 46.
- ^ Quoted in Partsch, pp. 46–47.
- ^ a b Selz, p. 266.
- ISBN 9783110176636, p. 4(in German)
Further reading
- Klaus Lankheit. Franz Marc: der Turm der blauen Pferde. Universal-Bibliothek B9069; Werkmonographien zur bildenden Kunst 69. Stuttgart: Reclam, 1961. OCLC 15931613(in German)
External links
- Media related to Der Turm der blauen Pferde at Wikimedia Commons