Franz Marc infused his work with spiritual significance using colours he associated with specific attributes as can be seen in Fox from 1911. Here, a blue and black fox rests in a highly colourful landscape.
The green of vegetation and trees are discernible but his colours show more of an artistic vision than the world. Marc associated blue with masculinity, yellow with feminine joy and red with violence; and we see each colour appear here. The darkness of the fox is tempered by the blue while the fox rests on a border of a vaguely menacingly red.
This gives the animal a nuanced character. All the while the joyous yellow rises up in the background. These features provide a panoramic conception of an all-embracing nature.
Franz Marc’s Fox is in the Von der Heydt Museum in Wuppertal, Germany.
