Blue Horse I

Blue Horse I is an oil painting by Franz Marc completed in 1911 and one of his best-known works. Filling almost the full height of a vertical canvas, a blue foal faces the viewer, its head tilted slightly to one side. Its light blue body with white spots contrasts with the dark navy hooves and mane. The surrounding landscape relies on strongly contrasting complementary colours: vermilion and light green in the foreground, and a hillside that shifts from carmine to yellow, violet and blue, ending in orange at the top. Marc first worked out the composition in a pencil sketch no bigger than a postcard, then transferred it to a large canvas with considerable detail. In the colour theory of Marc and the Der Blaue Reiter group, blue stands for the spiritual, so the blue horse became linked to the painter's inner calm and to the horse as a vehicle of progress. Shown alongside works by the group, it was at first misunderstood and even mocked. It now belongs to the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus in Munich and is among the most reproduced paintings of recent art.

Painter

Franz Marc

Date

1911

Medium

oil paint, canvas

Dimensions

112 × 84 cm

Museum

Lenbachhaus, Munich

Genre

animal art

Depicts

horse

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