Sleeping Animal

With bold, sweeping gestures, Franz Marc defines the curved contours of this resting horse, its neck wrapped back upon itself. Finely cut lines further articulate the interior masses. While the surrounding landscape is printed in naturalistic green and brown, the horse is a vibrant blue. For Marc, as for his associates in the Munich-based Blaue Reiter (Blue Rider) artist group, the color blue symbolized a heightened spiritual state. The artist believed that animals were spiritual beings and that nature, itself, pulsed with spirit. In a 1908 letter to his publisher, Marc wrote, “I am trying to intensify my feeling for the organic rhythm of all things, to achieve pantheistic empathy with the throbbing and flowing of nature’s bloodstream in trees, in animals, in the air.”