F T Marinetti: Fondazione e Manifesto del Futurismo / First Futurist Manifesto (1909)

An informative article about the beginnings of Futurism... including translations of the the First Futurist Manifesto at the extensive ItalianFuturism.org website

Click image above to buy this good overview of Futurism

Giacomo Balla: Street Light, Study of Light (1909)

Image of this painting included in the Giacomo Balla gallery at WikiPaintings

Georges Braque: Violin and Pitcher (1910)

Image of this painting at the Artchive Georges Braque pages

Click image above for more info or to buy this book about Braque's life and work

Erich Heckel: Franzi Reclining and Standing Child (both 1910)

Images of both of these woodcuts are included in the examples of artwork in the ArtLex entry for Die Brücke

Wassily Kandinsky: Improvisation XIV (1910)

Wassily Kandinsky began to experiment with abstracting from landscape and with painting expressive narrative pictures that were symbolic, though not taken from real scenes. This painting is one of his ‘improvisations’, implying that it is constructed rather than painted from observation, yet there is clearly a landscape within the balanced, rhythm of Fauve-like colours.

It is around this time that Kandinsky and Franz Marc formulated the ideas that were to define Der Blaue Reiter, a group of artists who shared artistic vision and exhibited together, based around an occasional journal also titled Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider).

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You can find an image of this painting amongst this gallery of Kandinsky's Improvisations 

Click on image above for more info or to buy this excellent Taschen book on Kandinsky

Gabriele Munter: Landscape with White Wall (1910)

Click image below for reviews or to buy this book of letters and writings by Munter and Kandinsky

Umberto Boccioni: Riot In The Galleria (1910)

Anton Giulio Bragaglia: Photodynamism, The Bow (1911)

Juan Gris: Bottles and Knife (1911)

Image of this painting at the Artchive's Juan Gris pages

Franz Marc: Dog in Snow (1911)

Strong influences of Fauvism and Cubist reductionism are mixed with some excellent observation in this very pleasing painting. (I fondly recall one student observing a resemblance to a peeled potato…) 

Along with his friend Wassily Kandisnky, Franz Marc was a founder member of the hugely important and influential group of artists collectively known as Der Blaue Reiter - the fairly loose association of several pioneering international artists who were united by the importance they placed upon colour and a belief that visual art could transcend cultural and political boundaries. 

Franz Marc: Tiger (1912)

This painting is typical of Marc’s strong style that was to be a major influence on German Expressionism, Abstract Expressionism, Cubism, and much of European Modernism that would follow ‘between the wars’. 

He saw colours not only as an expressive element in painting, but as representing various universal principals that were either in conflict or harmony. To Franz Marc, painting was a spiritual act and a form of transcendence. He was a student of theology and saw art as a combination of human, animal, nature, the spiritual and the scientific. In Aphorisms (1914) he wrote, “The art to come will be giving form to our scientific convictions. This art is our religion, our centre of gravity, our truth.” Although Franz Marc depicted mainly recognisable natural animal forms, his art heralded the development of Abstract Expressionism. This is clear in this work: Imagine the painting with the detail of the tiger’s eye omitted and it effectively becomes a powerful abstract. 

The composition is dynamic yet well-balanced, even though complementary colours of intense reds and greens are placed right next to each other. The theory that colour had both psychological and spiritual effects was shared by most Blue Rider artists. Marc also used colour as narrative and metaphorical elements. By creating a harmonious composition using contrasting colours, he poetically points out that society should be able to achieve harmony by the strength of its differences and not be fractured by them. Just because someone has different political or religious views, it does not mean they cannot contribute to a stable and progressive culture and like the whole of nature, human society should thrive on its variety and not strive for conformity. 

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Click image below for more info or to buy this book about The Blue Rider group of artists

Wassily Kandinsky: Cossacks (1912)

Deceptively simple and almost childish, this painting is at once: narrative, expressionistic, romantic, fauvist, abstract, symbolic, allegorical… The Cossacks of the title are reduced to cartoon-like blobs of colour and bold use of negative space on the right of the picture, the plume of smoke from the barrage of long rifles on the left is a fiery blood red cloud, the guns of either side bristle from the landscape that seems to be sliding into the valley… At the top, the dynamic forms of two more sabre-wielding Cossacks seem to be carving up the land itself, a confusion of calligraphic lines perhaps represents their slicing or the cross-fire of battle over the rainbow that holds the picture together and forms a bridge between the two sides, both hopeful of a brighter future and an end to hostilities…

It is not a painting of a battle, but a painting of some of the emotions and meanings of a battle, it depicts the violence and confusion, but is also romanticised. In this image, both sides are heroic in their fight for a better future and should instead be united by these hopes and not in conflict. Kandinsky is championing the bravery of the soldiers, whilst condemning war as useless and destructive. At the same time it operates as a representational scene and as an abstract composition of colour and line.

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Image of this painting with notes at the Tate website

Wassily Kandinsky: Black Spot 1 (1912)

There still seems to be elements of landscape here, though this is an abstract composition. The title refers to a formal element within the painting and not what the painting may represent, indicating the prime importance of form and structure here. The use of line is bold and, in some ways, is reminiscent of some earlier Fauve painters, but here the colour is not strictly contained by line and is also set free entirely from line. The relationship between line and colour becomes one of balance and interplay. The result is a dynamic composition that bypasses rational meaning, becoming directly expressive in a similar way to music. Kandinsky often avoided using titles that gave a clue to the meaning of a picture in order to ‘side-step’ the rational mind that is eager to categorise and dismiss. If the intellectual faculty was momentarily confounded, then this allowed the spiritual, or subconscious, faculty to engage with the work…

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Image of this painting at Olga's abc Gallery Kandinsky Pages

Click image above for more info or to buy the book of collected writings by the artist

Juan Gris: Portrait of Picasso (1912)

Extensive on-line gallery of Juan Gris paintings

Emil Nolde: Prophet (1912)

Click image below for more info or to buy this book about Nolde's later works, painted 'illegally' during the Second World War

Marcel Duchamp: Nude Descending a Staircase (1912)

This interactive Duchamp timeline places the work in context

Click image above for more info or to buy this book of interviews with Duchamp - not easy-reading, but entertaining, intellectual, witty and informative...

Giacomo Balla: Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash (1912)

Article about this painting at The Independent's Great Works section

Giacomo Balla: Speeding Automobile (1912)

Image of this painting on-line at the MoMA Collection website

Luigi Russolo: Solidity of Fog (1912)

Image and notes for this painting on-line at the Guggenheim Collection website

Franz Marc: Foxes (1913)

Good image of this painting at the WebMuseum's Franz Marc pages

This is a very dynamic composition with typically dazzling treatment of colour and light. In Marc’s many animal paintings, he shows animals in such a state of harmony with their natural surroundings, that they become interwoven, creating a metaphor for the ideal harmony between humans and nature.

This painting shows many characteristics that would later identify the style of the German Expressionist movement: strong dark shading mixed with rich colour and a dynamic, almost jewel-like faceting of the image.  The structure of this particular composition is echoed in the works of Juan Gris, the Cubist who loved colour...