Tiger
(oil on canvas, 1912))
Stadtische
Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich
Animals
in Art
Franz
Marc was an Expressionist
painter who formed Der
Blaue Reiter group with Wassily
Kandinsky. They were part of an artistic movement
who were searching for spiritual truth through their art.
Marc believed that colour had a vocabulary of emotional
keys that we instinctively understand, much in the same
way that we understand music. This language of colour
was one tool that Marc used to raise his art to a higher
'spiritual' plane, another was his choice of subject.
Franz
Marc painted animals as they symbolised an age of innocence,
like Eden before the Fall, free from the materialism and
corruption of his own time. Animals in Marc's art are
seldom painted in isolation. They are viewed as idealised
creatures in perfect harmony with the natural world they
inhabit.
'Tiger'
is a typical example of Franz Marc's painting style. It
is a fusion of several influences: the expressive
and symbolic
use of colour that he discovered in the paintings
of Van
Gogh and Gauguin combined with the fragmented and
prismatic compositions of various Cubist
styles.
The
Tiger and its surroundings are composed of geometric shapes
whose similarity suggests both the camouflage of the tiger
in its natural habitat and the harmony between the creature
and its environment. Colour is the main element used to
separate the tiger from its background. Strong yellow
and black shapes outline its form to convey the markings
of the beast. The geometric shapes that make up its form
are carefully scaled and simplified to represent the tiger's
features and its muscular body, while their rhythmic movement
is echoed in the stylised shapes of the rocks and foliage
of the background. This is indeed an idealistic view of
nature - an image designed to lift its subject above the
brutality of nature in the raw.
Franz
Marc yearned for a life on a higher spiritual plane. In
fact, before he took up art, he studied Theology with
a view to entering the priesthood. Ironically, his death
was a sad contradiction of his hopes and dreams. He volunteered
for service in the army at the start of World War 1 and
never painted again. He was killed by a piece of shrapnel
in 1916, during the assault on Verdun, the longest and
bloodiest battle of the war.
