Grazing Horses IV

1911 · Painting

Kann ich es sehen?

Ja, derzeit ausgestellt

Wo ist „Grazing Horses IV“ heute? Harvard Art Museums, Gallery 1500, floor 1, Modern and Contemporary Art, Cambridge. Ja, derzeit ausgestellt. Geprüft 29. September 2026.

Harvard Art Museums

Cambridge, Vereinigte Staaten

Saal1500, floor 1, Modern and Contemporary Art

Öffentlich ausgestellt.

Geprüft: vor 12 Tagen
Unverändert seit: 27. Sept. 2026
Quelle: Das Museum

Auf der Karte Museumsseite

Über das Gemälde

In 1911, deep in discussions with other members of the expressionist group Der Blaue Reiter and preoccupied with questions of color, Marc began work on Grazing Horses IV. Wishing to give form to inner experience and to free himself from formal constraints imposed by the outside world, he aimed to detach color from its descriptive function and assigned each primary color a specific symbolic value. As this painting’s numeric title suggests, Marc returned repeatedly to the horse as a subject. He became well known for his preoccupation with animals, seeing them as the embodiment of a better, purer world, the bringers of spiritual renewal to western culture.Grazing Horses IV became the artist’s first work to enter a museum collection, the same year it was made.

Like Kirchner’s self-portrait on view in the adjacent gallery, the painting first belonged to the Folkwang Museum in Hagen (later in Essen), which was at the vanguard of contemporary art collecting in Germany at the time. The painting was removed from the collection in 1937 as part of the National Socialist campaign to rid German museums of “degenerate art.”

Harvard Art Museums

Angaben

Inventarnummer: 2014.301

Im Katalog

Gemälde Öl Deutsche Malerei Moderne 20. Jahrhundert Deutschland

Quellen

Harvard Art Museums
Bild: Harvard Art Museums — © President and Fellows of Harvard College

Im Leben von Franz Marc

Das ganze Leben

1910
The second NKVM exhibition at the Thannhauser Galleries
Marc shows works at the second exhibition of the Neue Künstlervereinigung at the Thannhauser Galleries in Munich.
January 1910
Meeting August Macke
In January 1910 Marc meets August Macke for the first time; the meeting grows into an important friendship.
winter 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.
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