Expressionism was a name given to the art of Franz Marc, Kandinsky, and others who worked with strong primary colors. Expressionists did not look at the subjects to copy colors that they saw. Expressionist painters chose the colors that they liked. What are your favorite colors? When you paint like an Expressionist, choose colors that you like. PREP NOTES FOR LESSON 12 In this lesson children learn that modern art gave artists freedom to make choices about the colors they use. Provide photographs of farm animals for your children to refer to as they paint their subject. They will use realistic forms of the animals, but will paint with colors using their imaginations. Franz Marc 1880-1916 Marc Lesson 12
Some artists chose to change the lookof their paintings byusing strong, non-realistic colors in their art. Franz Marc thought back to his father’s landscape paintings in browns and greens. He now opposed this kind of painting and was determined to make art that expressed more feeling. He handed his friend, Kandinsky, the first Blue Rider pamphlet, which explained the ideas that he and Kandinsky had worked on. It featured a blue horse on the cover with a rider. Marc liked painting blue horses. The pamphlet explained that art could express ideas through color alone. They liked the modern, simpler way of showing an object. These two artists would soon be part of a larger group of Russian and German artists working in Germany, called the German Expressionists. Within a few years Germany would enter World War I, where Marc was killed. Through the war and afterward, the Expressionists continued to use strong colors, but they began painting the hard ugly realities of wartime. In contrast, Marc’s paintings give us examples of beautiful subjects dazzled by colors and remind us of how the Expressionist movement began.
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