L'ACTE GRATUIT

Franz Marc is one of my favourite painters and he’s particularly dear to me because of his death.

Marc was conscripted during World War I and was sent to the front lines. The great loss of life deeply affected him, including the many animals that were killed in the war.  One of his best known paintings, Tierschicksale (Fate of the Animals), 1st picture, was completed in 1913 when “the tension of impending cataclysm had pervaded society”. On the back of the canvas, Marc wrote, “Und Alles Sein ist flammend Leid” (“And all being is flaming agony”). Marc wrote to his wife of the painting, it “is like a premonition of this war – horrible and shattering. I can hardly conceive that I painted it.”

Franz Marc was killed on March 14, 1916 at the Battle of Verdun. I was born not far away from there and even after a century it’s an open wound in the middle of Europe, and such a tragic irony that an artist like him - true lover of life and colours - should have died there….

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