This Artist Turned to Painting Animals in a Turbulent Historical Moment

Franz Marc came of age in the early 20th century, a period of rapid change and impending global upheaval. “The climate they were living in was quite apocalyptic,” says Natalia Sidlina, curator of a new show at London’s Tate Modern of artists associated with the journal Der Blaue Reiter (“The Blue Rider”). “It was a time when empires were about to clash, a time of crises of faith, of class struggle.” Founded in Munich by Marc and his friend Wassily Kandinsky, the Blue Rider circle believed that art could not only reflect the turmoil of the times but also help point to a better future.

Marc would dedicate most of his canvases to animals. “People with their lack of piety, especially men, never touched my true feelings,” he wrote his wife in 1915. “But animals with their virginal sense of life awakened all that is good in me.” His perception of man’s wickedness would prove tragically prescient. Drafted into the German Army in World War I, Marc was killed in 1916 at the Battle of Verdun.

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Amy Crawford is a Michigan-based freelance journalist writing about cities, science, the environment, art and education. A longtime Smithsonian contributor, her work also appears in CityLab and the Boston Globe.