Franz Marc was born February 8, 1880, in Munich. His father was a professor of painting at the Munich Academy of Arts. His mother was from Alsace and it was her decision that Franz be given a bilingual as well as a Calvinistic education. Although Marc had initially intended to study theology with the intention of becoming a minister, he renounced religious studies in favor of philology. His university studies were interrupted by a year of military service after which he decided to become an artist. From 1900 to 1902, he studied at the Kunstakademie in Munich in the studios of Gabriel Hackl and Wilhelm von Diez. The following year during a visit to France, he was introduced to Japanese woodcuts and the work of the Impressionists in Paris as well as Tribal Art.In 1904, Marc left the academy to work independently in his own atelier in Munich.Marc suffered from recurrent severe depression from 1904 to 1907. In 1907, he married Maria Schnür in order to live with her and their natural-born child. He immediately left for Paris, where he enthusiastically encountered the work of Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, the Cubists, and the Expressionists; later, he would be equally impressed by the Henri Matisse exhibition in Munich in 1910.In 1908 Marc and Maria Schnür divorced. He spent the summer doing plein air painting in the company of Maria Franck (whom he had met with met at the same time as his first wife), at Lengries. In 1909 Marc helped to hang an exhibition of paintings by Vincent Van Gogh whose influence is clear in Marcs work of this time. Marc was receiving a steady income from the animal-anatomy lessons he was giving to other artists. He began to sell a few works, as early as 1909 and in that same year became friends with the painter, August Macke.In 1910, Marcs first solo show was held at Kunsthandlung Brackl, Munich, where he met the collector Bernhard Koehler. He publicly defended the Neue Künstlervereinigung München (NKVM) and was formally welcomed into the group early in 1911, when he met Jawlensky and most importantly Vasily Kandinsky who would become his closest friend. After internal dissension split the NKVM, he and Kandinsky formed Der Blaue Reiter, whose first exhibition took place in December 1911 at Heinrich Thannhausers Moderne Galerie, Munich. Marc invited members of the Berlin Brücke group to participate in the second Blaue Reiter show two months later at the Galerie Hans Goltz, Munich. Der Blaue Reiter Almanac was published with lead articles by Marc in May 1912.Although the Blue Rider existed officially for only two years, it produced publications, exhibitions, and aesthetic theories that have profoundly affected the art of our time.The Blaue Reiter provided a home for Marc, with companions with whom he could exchange ideas. His friendships with Kandinsky and Macke were part of the positive elements that led to a creative explosion in his painting. This period is the strongest and the most prolific in his brief career.He wrote: 'I try to heighten my feeling for the organic rhythm of all things, try to feel myself pantheistically into the trembling and flow of the blood of nature, in trees, in animals, in the air...I see no happier means to the animalizing of art, as I like to call it, than the animal picture.' (K. Lankheit, Franz Marc (Berlin, 1950) p. 18.In 1911 and 1912, Marc created his most famous horse paintings and exhibited with Kandinsky at the Frankfurter Kunstsalon M. Goldschmidt & Co. He married Maria Franck in London (in 1911), but for administrative reasons, the marriage was not recognized at home until Marc remarried Maria in 1913 in Germany.Another visit to Paris in 1912 led to Marcs establishing a close relationship with the French painter, Robert Delaunay.In May of 1913, Marc finished two major paintings: Turm der Baluen Pferde (missing) and Die Ersten Tiere (destroyed in a fire in 1917).The influence of futurism and orphism pushed Marcs paintings after 1913 ever closer to abstraction and in the 1914 'Fighting Forms' he appears to have abandoned figuration entirely.When World War I broke out in August 1914, Marc immediately joined up, as did his friend August Macke. Their collective enthusiasm for the task undoubtedly came from the futurist idea that war would be a form of purification of the old and corrupt civilization. The reality of the war quickly changed Marcs opinion, as did the death of Macke in action shortly after their enlistment. Profoundly affected by the loss of his friend, in 1915 he wrote: 'War is one of the most evil things to which we have sacrificed ourselves'. It was during the war that Marc produced his Sketchbook from the Field.On August 10, 1915, Marc was awarded the iron cross and promoted lieutenant. In February 1916, the German Ministry for Intellectual and Educational Affairs decided to give greater freedom to artists serving in the military and to withdraw them from the Front. Before Franz Marc could be recalled he was hit by a grenade while riding reconnaissance at the Battle of Verdun. Marc dies March 4, 1916, near Verdun-sur-Meuse, France.