August Macke (1887–1914)
Landscape with Cows and Camel, c. 1914
Oil on canvas
Height: 47 cm (18.5 in); Width: 54 cm (21.2 in)
Kunsthaus Zurich
August Macke (1887–1914)
Two Girls, c. 1913
Oil on canvas
130.0 x 100.0 cm
Städel Museum, Frankfurt
Two girls in the evening hustle and bustle of a big city. Everything is in motion. Persons and objects dissolve into crystalline geometric forms. Figures appear double, coloured lines cut through the scene, cones of light glare between the buildings. Macke was impressed by the way the Italian Futurists had glorified speed and technology in their paintings. Yet he did not reduce his composition entirely to abstract forms. The girls contemplate the goings-on but do not merge with their surroundings. More on this painting
Shortly after August's birth the family settled at Cologne, where Macke was educated at the Kreuzgymnasium (1897-1900). In 1900, when he was thirteen, the family moved to Bonn, where Macke studied at the Realgymnasium.
August Macke (1887–1914)
Landscape on the Teggernsee with a reading man, c. 1910
Oil on canvas
21.6 × 23.6 in (54.9 × 59.9 cm)
I have no further description, at this time
The first artistic works to make an impression on the boy were his father's drawings, Japanese prints and the works of Arnold Böcklin. In 1904 Macke enrolled at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. During this period he also took evening classes under Fritz Helmut Ehmke (1905), did some work as a stage and costume designer at the Schauspielhaus Düsseldorf, and visited northern Italy (1905) and Netherlands, Belgium and Britain (1906).
Macke lived most of his creative life in Bonn, with the exception of a few periods spent at Lake Thun in Switzerland and various trips to Paris, Italy, the Netherlands and Tunisia.
August Macke (1887–1914)
Kairouan (III), c. 1914
Watercolor
Height: 22.5 cm (8.8 in); Width: 29 cm (11.4 in)
Westphalian State Museum of Art and Cultural History
In Paris, where he traveled for the first time in 1907, Macke saw the work of the Impressionists. In Paris he also met Edouard Manet, Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec, Pissarro and Parisian life. His style was formed within the mode of French Impressionism and Post-impressionism and later went through a Fauve period. In 1909 he married Elisabeth Gerhardt.
August Macke (1887–1914)
Portrait of the artist's wife with a hat, c.1909
Oil on canvas
Height: 49.7 cm (19.5 in); Width: 34 cm (13.3 in)
Westphalian State Museum of Art and Cultural History
August Macke, (1887–1914)
Portrait with Apples (Portrait of the Artist's Wife), c. 1909
Oil on canvas
66.0 × 59.5 cm
Lenbachhaus, Munich, Germany
Macke's meeting with Robert Delaunay in Paris in 1912 was to be a sort of revelation for him. Delaunay's chromatic Cubism influenced Macke's art from that point onwards. His Shops Windows can be considered a personal interpretation of Delaunay's Windows, combined with the simultaneity of images found in Italian Futurism.
August Macke (1887–1914)
Rokoko, 1912
Oil on canvas
89 × 89 cm (35 × 35 in)
National Gallery of Norway
The reason this work is titled Rokoko is that the work has a distinct The Swing vibe to it. You can see a man and a woman engaging in a secret rendezvous while a man in the front is completely oblivious but also adding to ~the mood~ by playing whatever instrument that is. It’s all very fluffy and light. There is one notable difference between Rokoko and The Swing and that’s the style in which it’s created. Rokoko has minimal detail and maximum emotion. The Swing, on the other hand, is all about the details…every last phallic detail. More on this work
August Macke (1887–1914)
Shop Window, c.1912
Oil on canvas
Height: 106.8 cm (42 in); Width: 82.8 cm (32.5 in)
Sprengel Museum, Hanover, Germany
The exotic atmosphere of Tunisia, where Macke traveled in April 1914 with Paul Klee and Louis Moilliet was fundamental for the creation of the luminist approach of his final period, during which he produced a series of works and also as part of Fauvism.
August Macke (1887–1914)
Market in Tunis, c. 1914
Watercolor on paper
Künstlergruppe, Berlin
The paintings concentrate primarily on expressing feelings and moods rather than reproducing objective reality, usually distorting colour and form.
The legendary trip to Tunisia made by August Macke, Paul Klee and Louis Moilliet is widely discussed by art historians as being a critical moment in the development of 20th Century colourism, but what is less often discussed is the fact that the three young artists only spent fourteen days there. These were two weeks of constant sketching and painting and endless discussions about form and colourism, inspired by the boyish enthusiasm generated amongst a close group of friends travelling together and working abroad. The impact of this expedition on all three artists was immense. The trip had a lasting effect on the direction of Klee's work from this moment on, Moilliet executed his only important work here and Macke, who died later the same year as a soldier in the German army, painted his most brilliant oils and watercolours during and immediately after this trip. More on this painting
August Macke (1887–1914)
Galloping hussars, c. 1913
Oil on canvas
37.5 x 56.1 cm
Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum, Madrid
The horsemen seem to magically dematerialize, melting into the background and moving from sharp figures to simple squiggles, until they become little more than a sea of sparkling dots advancing towards battle and possibly death.
According to Vriesen, the work was painted in the artist's studio in Bonn in 1913 and the theme may derive from his volunteer enlistment in the 160th Infantry Regiment in 1908.
Macke paints this canvas after his first stint in the army, which he voluntarily enlisted. More on this painting
Macke's career was cut short by his early death in the second month of the First World War at the front in Champagne, France, on 26 September 1914.
August Macke
Farewell, c. 1914
Oil, cardboard
101 x 130.5 cm
Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany
One of Macke's last paintings was the unfinished work above. "With absolute clarity," Vriesen states, "the picture reflects the gloom and numbness that befell public life" before the first year of war was out, "the mood of uncertainty and disquiet which took possession of Macke as well."
A year after The Milliner’s Shop he was drafted into the German Army. The artists of the Western World had called for the destruction of the old world. Sub-consciously the empires that protected them agreed. As if by compulsion, they committed group suicide. The trenches were dug and August was posted to the French province of Champagne. A few weeks later he was dead, killed in action. Mowed down alongside 200,000 anonymous others. He was 27 years old. More on this painting
His final painting, Farewell, depicts the mood of gloom that settled after the outbreak of war. This was also the same year that he painted the famous painting Türkisches Café in München (1914). More on August Robert Ludwig Macke
August Macke, (1887–1914)
Türkisches Café, c. 1914
Oil on panel
Height: 60 cm (23.6 in); Width: 35.5 cm (13.9 in)
Lenbachhaus, Munich
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