“After the artist’s death on the Western Front in 1916, Marc’s widow and organizer of his estate described this work as follows: ‘In front of a stormy sky lightly tinged from purple to rusty red, draped with small clouds, blue crags with different shading (ultramarine) in the foreground, two green chamois are jumping across blue rocks. The rhythm of their movements is accentuated by two coloured semicircles (tree-trunks), diagonally cutting through the whole picture. In colours complimentary to Blue against Green (orange and reddish brown)’ (M. Marc, ‘Notes on Gemsen’, quoted in A. Hoberg & I. Jansen, Franz Marc, The Complete Work, vol. 2, London, 2004, p. 167)… The ‘animalisation’ of art was Marc’s aim of rendering a pictorial vision of the world as it might be seen from within – through the feeling and the senses of the living, sentient beings (animals and man) who inhabited it. Gemsen, with its two chamois or mountain goats shown elegantly springing against an undulating blue-mountain background and through an aperture formed by the curve of two trees, is a deceptively simple and in fact stunningly composed painting that both asserts and encapsulates this visionary aim.” 

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Franz Marc Museum website

Franz Marc’s artist page at Guggenheim

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~Sunnyside