from the blue rider with love: girl with cat

Ah. I do love a Franz Marc (1880-1916) now and then. This is his oil painting Girl with Cat from 1912 (thanks, Wiki Commons).

Marc was a major figure in the German Expressionist art movement known as Die Blaue Reiter, "The Blue Rider," named for a painting by Wassily Kandinsky, another major member. The group's aims included the expression of spiritual truths in their art and the use of color symbolism. Marc was very fond of that last. Roughly put, Marc associated blue with spirituality and male energy, and red and yellow with female energy - yellow also meant joy. Red, a color of earth and matter, also eventually developed a meaning of motherhood. And isn't that a charming red cat wiggling babylike in a happy girl's lap?

I wish his life had been always that happy. He was a soldier in WWI and was on a list of important artists to be withdrawn from battle, but was killed before he could be gotten out. What a waste.

Here's a bio of Marc from the Guggenheim.