- Artists, Kandinsky believed, must express the spirit and their
innermost feelings by orchestrating color, form, line, and space. He
produced numerous works like Improvisation 28,conveying feelings
with color juxtapositions, intersecting linear elements, and implied
spatial relationships. Ultimately, Kandinsky saw these abstractions as
evolving blueprints for a more enlightened and liberated society em-
phasizing spirituality.
FRANZ MARCLike many of the other German Expressionists,
Franz Marc(1880–1916), the cofounder of Der Blaue Reiter, grew
increasingly pessimistic about the state of humanity, especially as
World War I loomed on the horizon. His perception of human be-
ings as deeply flawed led him to turn to the animal world for his sub-
jects. Animals, he believed, were more pure than humanity and thus
more appropriate as a vehicle to express an inner truth. In his quest
to imbue his paintings with greater emotional intensity, Marc fo-
cused on color and developed a system of correspondences between
specific colors and feelings or ideas. In a letter to a fellow Blaue Rei-
ter, Marc explained: “Blue is the male principle, severe and spiritual.
Yellow is the female principle, gentle, happy and sensual. Red is matter,
brutal and heavy.”^3 Marc’s attempts to create, in a sense, an iconog-
raphy (or representational system) of color linked him to other
avant-garde artists struggling to redefine the practice of art.
Fate of the Animals (FIG. 35-8) represents the culmination of
Marc’s color explorations. Painted in 1913, when the tension of im-
pending cataclysm had pervaded society, the animals appear trapped
in a forest amid falling trees, some apocalyptic event destroying both
the forest and the animals inhabiting it. The painter distorted the en-
tire scene and shattered it into fragments. Significantly, the lighter
and brighter colors—the passive, gentle, and cheerful ones—are ab-
sent, and the colors of severity and brutality dominate the work. On
the back of the canvas Marc wrote “All being is flaming suffering.”
The artist discovered just how well his painting portended war’s an-
guish and tragedy when he ended up at the front the following year.
His experiences in battle prompted him to write to his wife that Fate
of the Animals “is like a premonition of this war—horrible and shat-
tering. I can hardly conceive that I painted it.”^4 His contempt for
people’s inhumanity and his attempt to express that through his art
ended, with tragic irony, in his death in action in 1916.
KÄTHE KOLLWITZThe emotional range of German Expres-
sionism extends from passionate protest and satirical bitterness to
the poignantly expressed pity for the poor in the prints ofKäthe
Kollwitz(1867–1945), who had no formal association with any Ex-
pressionist group. The graphic art of Gauguin and Munch stimulated
a revival of the print medium in Germany, especially the woodcut, and
these proved inspiring models. Kollwitz worked in a variety of print-
making techniques, including woodcut, lithography, and etching, and
explored a range of issues from the overtly political to the deeply per-
sonal. One image she explored in depth, producing a number of print
variations, was that of a mother with her dead child. Although she ini-
tially derived the theme from the Christian Pietà,she transformed it
into a universal statement of maternal loss and grief. In Woman with
Dead Child (FIG. 35-9), an etching and lithograph, she disavowed the
reverence and grace that pervaded most Christian depictions of Mary
holding the dead Christ (FIG. 22-12) and replaced those attributes
with an animalistic passion, shown in the way the mother ferociously
grips the body of her dead child. The primal nature of the image is in
keeping with the aims of the Expressionists, and the scratchy lines the
etching needle produced serve as evidence of Kollwitz’s very personal
touch. The impact of this image is undeniably powerful. Not since the
Gothic age in Germany (FIG. 18-51) had any artist produced a
mother-and-son group of comparable emotional power. That Koll-
witz used her son Peter as the model for the dead child no doubt made
the image all the more personal to her. The image stands as a poignant
premonition. Peter died fighting in World War I at age 21.
WILHELM LEHMBRUCKThe Great War also deeply affected
Wilhelm Lehmbruck(1881–1919). His figurative sculptures exude35-8Franz Marc,
Fate of the Animals,1913.
Oil on canvas, 6 43 – 4
8 9 –^12 . Kunstmuseum,
Basel.
Marc developed a system of
correspondences between
specific colors
and feelings or ideas. In
this apocalyptic scene of
animals trapped in a forest,
the colors of severity and
brutality dominate.
916 Chapter 35 EUROPE AND AMERICA, 1900 TO 19451 ft.35-9A
MODERSOHN-
BECKER, Self-
Portrait,1906.