Macke, August

Macke, August (1887–1914). German painter and designer, one of the founders of the Blaue Reiter. He was born at Meschede, Westphalia, and grew up in Bonn and Cologne. His main training was at the Düsseldorf Acad emy, 1904–6, and he also studied with Lovis Corinth in Berlin, 1907–8. Between 1907 and 1912 he visited Paris several times and he came closer in spirit to French art than any other German painter of his time, evolving a personal synthesis of Impressionism, Fauvism, and Orphism (he met Robert Delaunay in 1912). His subjects were generally light-hearted, without any of the angst associated with other Expressionists, and although his colour was bright it was never strident; often he showed people enjoying themselves (Zoological Garden, I, Lenbachhaus, Munich, 1912). In 1910 he joined the Neue Künstlervereinigung in Munich and in 1911 was part of the breakaway group that formed the Blaue Reiter. Apart from a few experiments, his work moved less towards abstraction than that of the other members of the group. In 1914 he visited Tunisia with Paul Klee and Louis Moilliet, and the vivid water-colours he did on this trip are often considered to be his finest achievements. Apart from painting, Macke made pottery, woodcarvings, and a few prints, and he also did a good deal of design work, notably for carpets, embroideries, tapestries, and wall-hangings, many of which were executed by his wife Elizabeth; she was the niece of Bernhard Koehler (1849–1927), a Berlin industrialist and art collector who was an important patron for the Blaue Reiter group as a whole.

Macke volunteered for the army soon after the outbreak of the First World War, seeing the conflict as a chance to cleanse and renew Western society. He changed his mind very quickly when he saw action, writing to his wife: ‘It is all so ghastly that I don't want to tell you about it. Our only thought is for peace.’ A few weeks after enlisting, he was killed in action, aged 27. Franz Marc, who was to suffer the same fate himself two years later, wrote of his friend: ‘Those of us who worked with him … knew what secret future this man of genius bore within him. With his death one of the most beautiful and most daring trends in the history of modern German art is abruptly broken off; none of us is in a position to continue where he left off … the loss of his harmonies means that colour in German art must pale by several tones and assume a duller, dryer ring. More than any of us he gave colour the clearest and purest sound—as clear and lucid as his whole being.’ Another artist who admired Macke greatly (even though he was very different stylistically) was Max Ernst, who described him as ‘a subtle poet, the very image of just and intelligent enthusiasm, generosity, judgement and exuberance'.