Expressionist Animal Paintings After Franz Marc

Expressionist artists working in the early 1900’s experimented with revolutionary techniques. Instead of drawing realistically, they simplified forms. Instead of using naturalistic colors that would be seen in nature, they used the power of color to express ideas and emotions. Franz Marc was an Expressionist artist who saw animals as the perfect subject, as they seemed to live in the moment and have a direct connection with nature.
In this painting, The Large Blue Horses (1911), Marc chose the colors he felt would express his ideas about his subject. He saw blue as a soulful color, yellow as a joyful color, and red as a color that symbolizes the earth and the material world. Based on Marc’s use of color symbolism, how would you interpret the painting?
Like Franz Marc, seventh graders used animals as the subject for their Expressionist style paintings. Students chose an animal and painted it in their environment using arbitrary and symbolic color that expressed a chosen feeling or emotion instead of using realistic colors (feel free to ask the students why they chose the colors they did!).