NEW YORK, NY.- Neue Galerie New York debuted “Franz Marc and August Macke: 1909-1914,” an exhibition that explores the life and work of two German artists and the power of their friendship. In the four years prior to Macke’s death in 1914 (Marc himself died in 1916), they wrote each other scores of letters, visited each other’s homes, traveled together, and often discussed the development of their work. They shared ideas about art, and through their innovations helped create the movement known as Expressionism in early twentieth-century Germany. On view through January 21, 2019, the exhibition focuses on Marc and Macke’s artistic relationship, how their lives intersected, and how their art was developed and received during their lifetimes.
Featuring approximately 70 paintings and works on paper, “Franz Marc and August Macke” is comprised of loans from public and private collections worldwide. While Marc has received acclaim in the United States, Macke has not become well known. This presentation at Neue Galerie New York is the first time that Macke’s work is being shown in an American museum exhibition, and the first exhibition in the United States on the relationship between these artists.
In early 1910, Marc wrote to Macke: “I consider it a great stroke of luck to have at last met a colleague of so inward and artistic a disposition— rarissime! How pleased I would be if we were to succeed in exhibiting our pictures side by side.” Both men were young artists—twenty-nine and twenty-three, respectively—when they first met in Munich in January of that year. They soon became friends and visited each other’s studios in and near Munich. Beginning with the first presentation of the Blaue Reiter (Blue Rider) in December 1911 and continuing for the next three years, they showed together in Munich, Berlin, Dresden, Cologne, and Moscow.
Marc and Macke shared many affiliations, friends, and interests. They were founding members of the Munich-based Blaue Reiter artists’ group. “The First Exhibition of the Editorial Board of the Blaue Reiter" (Die erste Ausstellung der Redaktion Der Blaue Reiter), the first time that paintings by Marc and Macke were exhibited together, resulted from the rejection on December 2, 1911, of Vasily Kandinsky’s Composition V by the jury for the third presentation of the New Artists’ Association. In reaction, Kandinsky, Marc, and Gabriele Münter resigned and Kandinsky and Marc, who were the editors of the Blaue Reiter Almanach, quickly organized their exhibition, which opened at the Moderne Galerie on December 18, 1911, concurrently with the New Artists’ Association show.
Marc is known for the spirituality of his colorful animals, whereas Macke’s color arrangements are delicate, and his compositions are more rhythmic. Both were figurative artists, who moved toward abstraction in 1913– 1914. Highlights in the exhibition include Marc’s The First Animals (1913), a lush gouache and pencil on paper work that demonstrates the artist’s simplified, stylized forms and a bold, symbolic use of color; and Macke’s Strollers at the Lake II (1912), in which colors and lines break away from the objects and produce rhythmic sequences. As both artists’ lives were cut short when they died in combat during World War I, one can only wonder how their respective styles might have evolved. Nevertheless, this exhibition explores the creative transformation— reflecting the absorption of new inspiration from Cubism, Orphism, and Futurism—that occurred during their lifetimes.
