Masterpiece Story: Fate of the Animals by Franz Marc

Historical Background

Franz Marc (1880–1916) was one of the most important and influential German artists of the early 20th century. Alongside Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944), he co-founded Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider), a creative group of Expressionist artists based in Munich, Germany. Since its foundation in 1911, Der Blaue Reiter embraced Expressionism which was an artistic movement focused on expressing emotions and feelings. Expressionist artists, like Franz Marc, painted images of strong sensations such as love, hate, pessimism, optimism, and brutality. Fate of the Animals is an Expressionist masterpiece by Franz Marc that captures Marc’s admiration of animals and pessimism of humanity.

General Composition

Fate of the Animals is a large oil on canvas measuring 264 cm wide by 195 cm high (8ft 8in wide by 6ft 5in high). It presents a forest landscape populated by woodland creatures. However, this landscape is not a realistic scene with photographic details or a kitsch scene of sentimentality and idealism. Violent colors fill the space. Sharp diagonal lines cut the composition like fragments of broken glass. Animals bark, neigh, and cry with distressful sounds. It is a disturbing image of what happens when nature is wronged.

Colors

Franz Marc believed that certain colors correlated to specific feelings and emotions. He also believed that animals possessed purer souls than people and were therefore more beautiful subjects to capture on his canvases. For Marc, colorful animals expressed nature’s inner truth and humanity’s pessimistic destiny. According to the artist, blue represents masculinity, unhappiness, severity, and spirituality. Yellow represents femininity, happiness, gentleness, and sensuality. Red represents energy, power, brutality, and heaviness.

World War I

Franz Marc had a great sense of foreboding when he painted Fate of the Animals in 1913. He had a premonition of a shattering apocalypse of modern society. The tensions he felt were the social rumblings and political shifts that led to the outbreak of World War I in 1914. Fate of the Animals visually captures the foretold dark energy of conflict. It presents a looming cataclysm.

Blue Deer

A blue deer stands in the middle foreground of the painting. It whips its head backwards in a violent jerking motion. Its eyes are closed as if shut during an intense moment of pain. The deer reacts as if a bullet has just hit its heart or a sharp stick has impaled its body. It flails as if it is in the last moments of life. The deer is a victim of its surroundings, and it projects Franz Marc’s feelings of dying spirituality. The deer, like society, is a creature on the cusp of death.

Bleeding Tree

Above the deer, blood spews from the bark of a tree. Blood drops in a steady pour like a red waterfall of demise. How can a tree bleed? Franz Marc does not aim for realism but for expression. Therefore, nature literally bleeds in pain. Like the blue deer, it is a cut animal, a dying creature, that is reacting to the social collapse of early 20th-century Europe. While this motif of a bleeding tree is over 100 years old, its power still resonates today but in the newer context of climate change.

Green Horses

Two green horses interact in the painting’s upper left corner. The two horses appear to be a stallion and a mare. The stallion, on the left, has a long black flowing mane. It opens its mouth and appears to neigh at the mare. Why is it neighing? Does it want to attract the mare’s attention? Or does it want to repel the mare’s presence?

The mare, to the right, turns its head toward the stallion. Its body is moving to the right with bent legs and sharp black shadows. Is the mare escaping from the stallion? Or does she beckon the stallion to follow her deep into the forest? The interaction between these two horses is ambiguous, and they reflect the muddled society that Franz Marc felt in 1913. These animals are not communicating clearly, just like people. Only loud noises and strong motions seem to exist.

Isolated Spaces

Fate of the Animals is like a nightmare occurring in the depths of a forest. Fractured colorful planes cut the scene in Cubist-like distortion. They inject ferocious energy that electrifies the scene but also separates the animals into isolated spaces. For example, the blue deer is separated from the green horses by a thick red barrier. The red foxes on the far right scene are separated from the other animals by the large diagonal bleeding tree. Every animal appears trapped within the scene.

Reflection

Franz Marc painted Fate of the Animals with almost psychic apprehension of World War I. It captures a shattered world full of savage emotions and spatial isolation. Fate of the Animals is an Expressionist masterpiece by Franz Marc. It draws the viewer into reflection. It begs the questions: what is the destiny of these animals? What is the destiny of human society? What is the Fate of the Animals?