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August Macke
August Robert Ludwig Macke (3 January 1887 – 26 September 1914) German painter who was a leader of Der Blaue Reiter (“The Blue Rider”), an influential group of Expressionist artists. He lived during a particularly active time for German art: he saw the development of the main German Expressionist movements as well as the arrival of the successive avant-garde movements which were forming in the rest of Europe. As an artist of his time, Macke knew how to integrate into his painting the elements of the avant-garde which most interested him.
August Robert Ludwig Macke was born in Germany on 3 January 1887, in Meschede, Westphalia. He was the only son of August Friedrich Hermann Macke (1845–1904), a building contractor and amateur artist, and his wife, Maria Florentine, née Adolph, (1848–1922), who came from a farming family in Westphalia’s Sauerland region. Shortly after August’s birth the family settled at Cologne, where Macke was educated at the Kreuzgymnasium (1897-1900) and became a friend of Hans Thuar, who also became an artist. In 1900, when he was thirteen, the family moved to Bonn, where Macke studied at the Realgymnasium du poissons and became a friend of Walter Gerhardt and Gerhardt’s sister, Elisabeth, whom he married a few years later.
The first artistic works to make an impression on the boy were his father’s drawings, the Japanese prints collected by his friend Thuar’s father and the works of Arnold Böcklin which he saw on a visit to Basel in 1900. In 1904 Macke’s father died, and in that year Macke enrolled at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, under Adolf Maennchen (1904-1906). During this period he also took evening classes under Fritz Helmut Ehmke (1905), did some work as a stage and costume designer at the Schauspielhaus Düsseldorf, and visited northern Italy (1905) and Netherlands, Belgium and Britain (1906).
Thereafter Macke lived most of his creative life in Bonn, with the exception of a few periods spent at Lake Thun in Switzerland and various trips to Paris, Italy, the Netherlands and Tunisia. In Paris, where he traveled for the first time in 1907, Macke saw the work of the Impressionists, and shortly after he went to Berlin and spent a few months in Lovis Corinth’s studio. His style was formed within the mode of French Impressionism and Post-impressionism and later went through a Fauve period.
In 1909 he married Elisabeth Gerhardt. Macke discovered the work of Henri Matisse and the other Fauve artists while visiting Paris in 1909; this convinced Macke to use brighter, less-naturalistic colours, applied in broad brushstrokes. The same year, he met the young Expressionist painter Franz Marc in Munich, Germany, and the two began to work closely, developing a more abstract and colourful style. In 1911 Macke joined Der Blaue Reiter, which had been founded by Marc and Wassily Kandinsky. Macke avoided the often violent style of his fellow Expressionists, and he preferred human subjects to the animals that Marc and Kandinsky portrayed. In Three Girls in a Barque (1911), Macke combined the many styles he had recently discovered: the figures are rendered in flat colours and graceful lines reminiscent of Matisse, while the background is sweeping and abstract, with bright patches of colour that are distinctly in the manner of Kandinsky.
In 1912 Macke met the French painter Robert Delaunay, who worked in a colourful Cubist-influenced style called Orphism. Subsequently, Macke introduced a Cubist analysis of form into his own paintings. Throughout the evolution of his style, Macke generally remained faithful to Impressionist subject matter, portraying contemporary scenes of urban leisure. His Shops Windows can be considered a personal interpretation of Delaunay’s Windows, combined with the simultaneity of images found in Italian Futurism.
In 1914 Macke traveled with the Swiss painter Paul Klee to Tunis, Tunisia, where Macke painted a series of works that place the subject upon a grid of various pure colours. The emphasis on colour in these paintings, which are some of his most widely admired works, demonstrate the effect that Delaunay’s Orphic Cubism had upon him. During this period he produced a series of works now considered masterpieces.
Macke’s career was cut short by his early death in the second month of the First World War at the front in Champagne, France, on 26 September 1914. His final painting, Farewell, depicts the mood of gloom that settled after the outbreak of war. This was also the same year that he painted the famous painting Türkisches Café in München (1914).
At a 1997 Christie’s auction, Macke’s The Couple at a Garden Table (1914) was sold for £2 million. Market in Tunis (1914) sold for £2.86 million ($4.1 million) in 2000. Consigned by the estate of Ernst Beyeler, the artist’s In the Bazar (1914) was auctioned for £3.96 million – then four and a half times the high estimate – at Christie’s in 2011.
Read moreShowing 1–100 of 128 results
In The Bazar
By August MackeSizes starting at $289.00Market In Tunis
By August MackeSizes starting at $279.00Couple At The Garden Table
By August MackeSizes starting at $289.00Türkisches Café
By August MackeSizes starting at $279.00Turkish Cafe I
By August MackeSizes starting at $299.00Children With Goat
By August MackeSizes starting at $289.00Woman With A Yellow Jacket
By August MackeSizes starting at $369.00The Lady In The Green Jacket
By August MackeSizes starting at $309.00Promenade
By August MackeSizes starting at $299.00Couple In The Forest
By August MackeSizes starting at $299.00Lady In A Park 1914
By August MackeSizes starting at $329.00Modefenster
By August MackeSizes starting at $289.00Rokoko
By August MackeSizes starting at $319.00Russian Ballet I
By August MackeSizes starting at $289.00Three Girls In Yellow Straw Hats I
By August MackeSizes starting at $319.00Four Girls
By August MackeSizes starting at $279.00Girl Under Trees
By August MackeSizes starting at $329.00Zoological Garden I 1912
By August MackeSizes starting at $339.00Walk On The Bridge 1913
By August MackeSizes starting at $329.00Walk On The Bridge
By August MackeSizes starting at $269.00Women In A Park – With A White Parasol
By August MackeSizes starting at $289.00Leute Am Blauen See (1913)
By August MackeSizes starting at $309.00Woman With Fishbowl
By August MackeSizes starting at $279.00Large, Well-Lit Shop Window
By August MackeSizes starting at $319.00Woman With Umbrella In Front Of A Hat Shop (1914)
By August MackeSizes starting at $289.00Fashion Shop
By August MackeSizes starting at $309.00Milliner’s Shop
By August MackeSizes starting at $329.00Two Women In Front Of A Hat Shop
By August MackeSizes starting at $279.00Circus 1913
By August MackeSizes starting at $279.00Tightrope Walker (1914)
By August MackeSizes starting at $309.00Tightrope Walker
By August MackeSizes starting at $329.00Pierrot
By August MackeSizes starting at $289.00Farewell
By August MackeSizes starting at $279.00Girls Bathing (1913)
By August MackeSizes starting at $289.00Indians On Horsebacks 1911
By August MackeSizes starting at $279.00Storm 1911
By August MackeSizes starting at $279.00Boy With Book And Toys
By August MackeSizes starting at $279.00Two Girls
By August MackeSizes starting at $289.00Bathing Girls With The Town In The Background), 1913
By August MackeSizes starting at $279.00Children With Goat
By August MackeSizes starting at $319.00Adam And Eve
By August MackeSizes starting at $259.00Algeria Market 1914
By August MackeSizes starting at $249.00Market In Tunis Ii
By August MackeSizes starting at $269.00Blond Girl With Doll
By August MackeSizes starting at $289.00Blue Girl Reading
By August MackeSizes starting at $279.00Children At The Fountain Ii 1910
By August MackeSizes starting at $279.00Church Decorated With Flags
By August MackeSizes starting at $279.00Color Composition
By August MackeSizes starting at $289.00Colored Composition Large Flower Carpet
By August MackeSizes starting at $279.00Colored Composition Of Forms, 1914
By August MackeSizes starting at $279.00Colored Shapes Ii
By August MackeSizes starting at $299.00Colored Shapes Iii
By August MackeSizes starting at $299.00Eastern Women
By August MackeSizes starting at $299.00Elisabeth Am Schreibtisch
By August MackeSizes starting at $329.00Vegetable Fields
By August MackeSizes starting at $399.00Church In Kandern 1911
By August MackeSizes starting at $249.00Clivia And Geranium
By August MackeSizes starting at $299.00Garden On Lake Thun (Pomegranate Tree And Palm In The Garden), 1914
By August MackeSizes starting at $279.00House In The Garden
By August MackeSizes starting at $279.00Terrasse Des Landhauses In St. Germain
By August MackeSizes starting at $289.00Hussars On A Sortie (1913)
By August MackeSizes starting at $279.00Landscape In Tegernsee Bavaria
By August MackeSizes starting at $309.00Lesende Frau
By August MackeSizes starting at $279.00Little Walter’s Toys
By August MackeSizes starting at $309.00Our Street In Grey, 1911
By August MackeSizes starting at $309.00Picnic On The Beach (Picnic After Sailing), 1913
By August MackeSizes starting at $289.00Riding Indians At The Tent
By August MackeSizes starting at $279.00Rocky Landscape (1914)
By August MackeSizes starting at $309.00Park At The Red House
By August MackeSizes starting at $319.00Staudacher’s House At The Tegernsee
By August MackeSizes starting at $289.00Still Life With Begonia 1914
By August MackeSizes starting at $289.00Still Life With Ostrich And Buddha
By August MackeSizes starting at $289.00Still-Life With Bowl Of Apples And Japanese Fan
By August MackeSizes starting at $289.00Storytellers 1912
By August MackeSizes starting at $279.00Two Women At The Table
By August MackeSizes starting at $319.00Street With Church In Kandern
By August MackeSizes starting at $299.00Tegernsee Landscape
By August MackeSizes starting at $279.00View From The Tegernsee
By August MackeSizes starting at $279.00Landscape On The Teggernsee With A Reading Man
By August MackeSizes starting at $309.00Strollers At The Lake I
By August MackeSizes starting at $339.00Three Women At The Table By The Lamp
By August MackeSizes starting at $309.00Unsere Strasse Mit Reitbahn, Bonn
By August MackeSizes starting at $339.00View Of An Alley
By August MackeSizes starting at $299.00Walk With Flowers
By August MackeSizes starting at $269.00Woman Embroidering In An Armchair
By August MackeSizes starting at $299.00Woman Wearing A Flower Bowl 1910
By August MackeSizes starting at $339.00Woman Writing
By August MackeSizes starting at $279.00Young Girl With Horse And Donkey, 1914
By August MackeSizes starting at $399.00Abstract Pattern I
By August MackeSizes starting at $289.00Garden On Lake Thun
By August MackeSizes starting at $269.00Frühlingslandschaft In Tegernsee
By August MackeSizes starting at $279.00Garten Des Künstlers In Bonn
By August MackeSizes starting at $329.00Sailboat On The Tegernsee, 1910
By August MackeSizes starting at $259.00Segelboot Am Morgen
By August MackeSizes starting at $279.00St. Mary’s Church In The Snow, Bonn
By August MackeSizes starting at $309.00St. Mary’s With Houses And Chimney (Bonn)
By August MackeSizes starting at $259.00Still Life With A Cat 1910
By August MackeSizes starting at $309.00Landscape By The Sea
By August MackeSizes starting at $279.00Landscape With Cows And Camel
By August MackeSizes starting at $299.00Mother And Child In The Park
By August MackeSizes starting at $369.00