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The Large Blue Horses
Franz Marc · Early Modern (Fauvism, Cubism, Expressionism)
- Artist
- Franz Marc (1880–1916)
- Date
- 1911
- Dimensions
- 105.7 x 181.1 cm
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Location
- Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, United States
The Large Blue Horses shows three powerful blue horses standing close together, their curved bodies filling almost the whole canvas, in front of red and yellow hills shaped like the horses' own rounded forms.
A closer look
Marc chose colours for their emotional meaning, not their realism. He explained that blue was the masculine principle, stern and spiritual; yellow the feminine, gentle and cheerful; and red matter, heavy and brutal. The horses' bodies curve and interlock in a rhythmic harmony that echoes the rolling landscape, so that animals and nature seem made of the same substance. For Marc, animals were purer and closer to the spiritual essence of the world than humans, and he painted them as symbols of innocence and harmony.
History of the painting
Marc was killed at Verdun in 1916, only five years after painting it. The picture later came to Karl Nierendorf, a German art dealer who had settled in New York, and in 1942 the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis bought it from him, and it has become one of the museum’s signature works.
More by Franz Marc
In this gallery
Famous works elsewhere
- The Tower of Blue Horses 1914
- The fate of the animals 1913
- Fox 1911