Native Americans on Horses
August Macke, 1911
Painted in 1911 by August Macke, this canvas shows a landscape of rounded, sharp-edged mountains beneath a dark yellow sky, with huts placed in front of them. Three figures fill the scene: two riders on horseback and a third man holding a spear decorated with blue, white and red feathers. Macke painted them as he imagined Native Americans rather than from direct observation, so the scene feels fantastical and somewhat unreal.
Two influences are visible. The dark, glossy landscape, the repeated formula-like shapes and the leaning trees recall his friend Franz Marc. Macke also brings in Cubism here for the first time, though in a restrained way: a schematic, sculptural form and diagonal elements that push the composition to the left. His Cubism is softer and more painterly than that of his colleagues, closer to Fauvism. The 'noble savage' motif links the work to the European avant-garde's longing for the exotic and for an alternative paradise, a legacy of Gauguin. Macke described painting as a joy in nature, and he brought to Der Blaue Reiter a poetic, fairy-tale quality that contrasted with his colleagues' more intellectual approach.
- Painter
- August Macke
- Date
- 1911
- Medium
- oil paint
- Dimensions
- 44 × 60 cm
- Museum
- Lenbachhaus, Munich
- Movement
- abstract art
- Genre
- landscape painting
- Depicts
- man
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