Franz Marc (1880-1916) unique talent was recognized and nurtured at the Munich Academy. On several trips to Paris, he was impressed by Van Gogh works, as he saw it for the first time. These works were significantly and helped him to develop autonomous artistic language. Through his friend August Macke, Wassily Kandinsky and Gabriele Munter and Alfred Kubin, he knew about the expressionist artists association founded in 1911 "The Blue Rider". At the outbreak of the First World War Marc was drafted into military service and fell two years later in the grave fighting at Verdun.

Marc grappled with naturalism, the Art Nouveau and the French Impressionism, but was looking for a new expression language to represent "the spiritual essence of things" can. With never a previously unknown consequence he opened the way for an art in the colours far beyond the naturalistic representation acquired a symbolic meaning: "Every colour must say clearly who and what it is, and has to this on a clear form", said Marc. Blue is the colour of the spiritual with him, red is love, passion and vulnerability, yellow is the sun and the femininity.

In the center of his painting were in particular animals, for him it symbolized purity and originality in contrast to people. Just like Kandinsky he was looking for the renewal of the spiritual in art.