In 1937 Franz Marc was included in the Nazi-organised ‘Degenerate Art’ exhibition alongside Otto Dix, Paul Klee and many other artists whose work was held up as a prime example of cultural deterioration. It is easy to see why Marc’s paintings – fantastically colourful, Expressionistic and often close to what we might call naive art – were derided by the Nazis, but a century on it is precisely those qualities that mark him out as a key figure in the development of modern art and one of the most significant figures in the history of German Expressionism. This exhibition in Düsseldorf features 120 works made over the course of his too-short career (he died at the Battle of Verdun at the age of 36), from his early, childlike animal pictures such as Fox (Blue-black Fox) and The Little Yellow Horses (both 1911) to the more abstract, angular works he produced after 1912, which show the extent to which he had been seduced by cubism (12 September–24 January 2027).
Find out more from the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen’s website
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