The Bewitched Mill
Om maleriet
Among the German Expressionists, artists who used strong color and exaggerated form to express emotional content, Franz Marc was especially committed to his empathic interest in the life of animals. "Is there a more mysterious idea," he asked, "than to imagine how nature is reflected in the eyes of animals?" Beginning in 1905, he devoted himself to representing the world with a fresh and purifying vision. Marc painted The Bewitched Mill following a sojourn to the Italian town of Merano in the southern Tirol. The work's title refers to the "magical" harmony he sensed there between human life, represented by the houses and mill on the left, and nature, embodied by the lyrical region of trees and animals on the right.
Art Institute of ChicagoCC BY 4.0
Oplysninger
- Inventarnummer
- 1931.522
Imens i livet hos Franz Marc
Hele livetwinter 1910 – 1911
Winter 1910–11: the turn to his mature manner
In the view of the writer Morgan Meis, Marc became an artist this very winter: out of earlier confusion comes a unified vision, his animals emerge pure and true from the canvas, and colour becomes the main thing.
February 1911
Meeting Wassily Kandinsky
Although Marc joined the association in autumn 1910, he meets its leader, the Russian abstract painter Wassily Kandinsky, only in February 1911.
December 1911
Leaving the NKVM and founding Der Blaue Reiter
In December 1911 Marc, together with Macke and Kandinsky, breaks away from the Neue Künstlervereinigung and organises his own group, Der Blaue Reiter; he is also credited with founding the journal that became the centre of the circle.
December 1911 – January 1912
The first Blue Rider exhibition
Several of Marc's works are shown at the first Blue Rider exhibition at the Thannhauser Galleries in Munich, which has been called the apex of German Expressionism.
1913
Married: Maria Marc
1914
Called up at the start of the First World War
At the outbreak of war in 1914 Marc, like August Macke, is mobilised and sent to the front; early biographers thought he had volunteered, but conscription was practically impossible to avoid.
