About August Macke

Born: 1887 in Meschede
Died: 1914 in Perthes-lès-Hurlus

Born on 3 January 1887 in Meschede, the Netherlands, August Macke grew up in Bonn and Cologne. At the age of 17 he begins his studies at the Academy of Arts and the School of Arts and Crafts in Düsseldorf. In 1907 Macke travels to Paris, where he sees the painting of the Impressionists, which fascinates and influences him. Back in the Empire he goes to Berlin and attends Lovis Corinth's painting school for a short time. After doing a year's voluntary military service in 1908, the artist marries Elisabeth Gerhardt. In 1909 he met Franz Marc in Tegernsee, with whom he would share a lifelong friendship as an artist. With their colour-intensive, two-dimensional forms, Macke's works from this period clearly show the influence of Matisse's and Marc's painting. In 1911 Macke joined Kandinsky and Marc, who in the same year organised exhibitions under the name "Der Blaue Reiter" (The Blue Rider) and published the almanac of the same name. On another trip to Paris with Marc, he met Robert Delaunay, who in turn visited him later in Bonn in the company of Guillaume Apollinaire. The artist came to terms with Apollinaire's Orphist painting style. The trip to Tunis with Paul Klee and Louis Moilliet in 1914 also contributed to the completion of his very personal style with its luminous, intense colours and crystalline forms. On 26 September 1914 Macke was killed on the Western Front in France at the age of 27.