franz marc: horse and dog

thanks wikimedia commons (PD)

Blue: to Franz Marc (German; 1880-1916) this was the color of spirituality and masculinity.  This is his "Horse and Dog" of 1913, with a large, powerfully modeled horse arching over his smaller brown companion like the sheltering roof of a house.  Look also at the sensitive curls that build the horse's face and eye, curls that seem to translate into surrounding leafy forms.  Meanwhile the dog sits with an air of contentment, perhaps even sleepiness (I think it looks sleepy.  Phallic, too, but I suppose Marc's still working with his horse symbolism there).  There is tenderness and peace here, invoked with very little in the way of detail but all the more pure to me for that.  I'm a Marc fan anyway, as you longtime readers know.