August Macke

August Macke was one of the great Colourists of German Expressionism, his paintings clearly inspired by Fauvism, Cubism, Futurism, and Abstraction. Macke’s daily scenes of elegant urban flâneurs window-shopping, promenading through the park, or ambling around the zoo, are characterized by dynamic use of light and bright, harmonious colours. However, what was a promising artistic career was cut short in 1914, when, aged only 27, Macke died at the French front, a few weeks after the declaration of World War One. 

After studying at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf between 1904 and 1906 and the local School of Arts and Crafts, Macke moved around frequently, with trips to France, Italy, Holland, Tunisia, as well as a few sojourns at Lake Thun in Switzerland. But it was in Paris, in 1907, where the young artist first encountered the Impressionists, who would have significant impact on his style. This interest in French art also led him to Franz Marc, who in turn, introduced him to Wassily Kandinsky. For a while, Macke was part of the pioneering Expressionist group Der Blaue Reiter, exhibiting at both Blaue Reiter exhibitions in 1912 and participating in the group’s 1912 Almanac. Schisms soon emerged, primarily due to his disdain for Kandinsky’s increasingly metaphysical approach to Abstraction. However, a new frontier opened to him on a visit to Paris in 1912, where Macke fell for Robert Delaunay’s chromatic Cubism, or Orphism. From then onwards, Macke’s harmonious images were split into prisms, the figures disintegrated into geometric shapes. His practise soared in the last months of his life, when he visited Tunis in April 1914 with friends Paul Klee and Louis Moilliet. Here, Macke’s work reached its apogee under the North African sun, creating the Luminist technique of his final period, through a series of watercolours. 

Macke’s work is included in important museum and private collections in Germany and worldwide. Following World War One, Macke’s wife, Elisabeth Gerthardt, organized the August Macke Memorial Exhibition in the autumn of 1920, which included over 160 works at Museum Wiesbaden. To mark the 100th anniversary of this comprehensive retrospective, Museum Wiesbaden, in close cooperation with the Kunstmuseum Bonn, presented a historical survey of Macke’s oeuvre in 2020. Meanwhile, the August-Macke-Haus in Bonn, in Macke’s former home in Bonn, has been in operation since 1991.