Franz Marc Quotes

• Art has always been and is in its very essence the boldest departure from nature. It is the bridge into the spirit world.

  Franz Marc

  Art, Essence, Bridges

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• I never, for instance, have the urge to paint animals 'the way I see them,' but rather the way they are... The way they themselves look at the world and feel their being

  Franz Marc

  Art, Animal, Way

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• Art is nothing but the expression of our dream; the more we surrender to it the closer we get to the inner truth of things, our dream-life, the true life that scorns questions and does not see them.

  Franz Marc

  Life, Letting Go, Dream

  from a note author wrote down on his return from Paris as quoted in "Expressionism" by Wolf-Dieter Dube, 1973, p. 126, 1907.

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• Blue is the male principle, stern and spiritual. Yellow the female principle, gentle, cheerful and sensual. Red is matter, brutal and heavy and always the colour which must be fought and vanquished by the other two.

  Franz Marc

  Spiritual, Blue, Two

  Susanna Partsch, Franz Marc (2001). “Marc”, p.26, Taschen

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• Is there a more mysterious idea than to imagine how nature is reflected in the eyes of animals?

  Franz Marc

  Eye, Animal, Ideas

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• We are staunch and true and in rather a champagne mood.

  Franz Marc

  Europe, Mood, Champagne

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• What appears spectral today will be natural tomorrow.

  Franz Marc

  Today, Tomorrow, Natural

  "The 'Savages' of Germany". Der Blaue Reiter (Blue Rider) Almanak, Munich, 1912.

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• Today we are searching for things in nature that are hidden behind the veil of appearance... We look for and paint this inner, spiritual side of nature.

  Franz Marc

  Spiritual, Europe, Looks

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• I am trying to intensify my feeling for the organic rhythm in all things, trying to establish a pantheistic contact with the tremor and flow of blood in nature, in animals, in the air - trying to make it all into a picture, with new movements and with colours that reduce our old easel paintings to absurdity.

  Franz Marc

  Animal, Air, Blood

  "Letters of the great artists - from Blake to Pollock" edited by Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, (p. 207), 1963.

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• The great artists do not seek their forms in the midst of the past, but take the deepest soundings they can of the genuine, profoundest of their age.

  Franz Marc

  Artist, Past, Age

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• Art will liberate itself from the needs and desires of men. No longer will we paint a forest ora horseas we like oras theyappear to us, but as they really are.

  Franz Marc

  Art, Men, Desire

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• Whenever we have seen a crevice in the crust of convention, we have called attention to it, because we have hoped for a force underneath, which will someday come to light.

  Franz Marc

  Light, Attention, Someday

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• Todayart is moving in a direction of which our fathers would never even have dreamed.We stand before the new pictures as in a dream and we hear the apocalyptic horsemen in the air.

  Franz Marc

  Dream, Father, Moving

  1912 Subscription prospectus of the Blaue Reiter Almanac, Jan.

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• Like everything genuine, its inner life guarantees its truth. All works of art created by truthful minds without regard for the work's conventional exterior remain genuine for all times...

  Franz Marc

  Art, Mind, Guarantees

  "The 'Savages' of Germany". Der Blaue Reiter (Blue Rider) Almanak, Munich, 1912.

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• Traditions are lovely thingsto create traditions, that is, not to live off them.

  Franz Marc

  Lovely, Tradition

  1914-15 Aphorisms.

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• Serious art has been the work of individual artists whose art has had nothing to do with 'style' because they were not in the least connected with the style or the needs of the masses. Their works arose rather in defiance of their times.

  Franz Marc

  Art, Style, Needs

  "The 'Savages' of Germany". Der Blaue Reiter (Blue Rider) Almanak, Munich, 1912.

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• Who is able to paint the existence of a dog as Picasso paints the existence of a cubic shape?

  Franz Marc

  Dog, Shapes, Able

  Quoted in Briefe, Aufzeichnungen und Aphorismen (2 vols,1920), translated by Chipp in his Theories of Modern Art (1968).

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• Religions die slowly.

  Franz Marc

  Dies

  "The 'Savages' of Germany". Der Blaue Reiter (Blue Rider) Almanak, Munich, 1912.

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