Fox
Franz Marc, 1911
Fox, also known as Blue and Black Fox or Blue Fox, is an oil on canvas that Franz Marc painted in 1911 in the Bonn studio of his fellow painter August Macke, while returning from a trip to England. A few months later, in December of that year, the Munich exhibition of Der Blaue Reiter, the group Marc had founded with Wassily Kandinsky, opened. The picture was offered to Richart Reiche, curator of the Barmer Kunstverein, who was showing Marc's work; it was Red Dog, painted alongside it, that found a buyer. Both belong to an early series of animal subjects in which pure colour works as a symbol. Marc built the palette on the spectrum: the primaries red, yellow and blue, and the secondaries orange, green and violet. The fox, curled on the ground beneath a tree, is tinted blue, while the background, an abstract landscape of strong complementary contrasts, echoes the impact of French Fauvism on German Expressionism. Marc believed animals had a special innocence, and the fox was a recurring subject for him before the First World War.
- Painter
- Franz Marc
- Date
- 1911
- Medium
- oil paint, canvas
- Dimensions
- 50 × 64 cm
- Museum
- Von der Heydt Museum, Wuppertal
- Movement
- Expressionism
- Genre
- animal art
- Depicts
- fox
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