Franz Marc
Vornübergebeugt kauernder weiblicher Akt
1904/1906
Double-sided, washed charcoal and pencil drawing on wove paper, with traces of former thread binding 28.8 x 19.9 cm Framed under glass (double-sided). Each inscribed "8" resp. "8a" in pencil lower right. - In excellent condition.
The present drawing is from the second of Franz Marc's total of 33 sketchbooks. Presumably made up of five groupings consisting of four leaves each, the sketchbook contains relatively few drawings; it begins with a portrait of his friend Annette von Eckhardt. In contrast to most of Marc's other sketchbooks, the remainder contains almost exclusively portrait and nude drawings. It features the largest paper format of all of the preserved sketchbooks. Today, except for a few pages, it is to be found in an almost complete form in the collection of the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg (cf. Annegret Hoberg/Isabelle Jansen, Franz Marc Werkverzeichnis Band III, Skizzenbücher und Druckgraphik, Munich 2011, pp. 16 ff.). Our drawing presents what is perhaps the most impressive nude of this second sketchbook. The reverse side contains a pencil drawing following the outlines of the nude on the front side.
Marc began his second sketchbook in 1904. During the years of that period - with regard to his overall oeuvre - the artist was searching for his own possibilities for expressing himself. For him it was a time of feeling his way along and experimenting, and the body of works he created were thus strikingly multifaceted from a formal point of view. Marc had not become familiar with the work of the French Impressionists until he was in Paris in 1903. Deeply impressed, it became clear to him that the aim of art could not lie in the reproduction of the visible world. Marc sensed that he had to look behind the outward appearance of things (cf. exhib. cat. Franz Marc: Zeichnungen und Aquarelle, Berlin/Essen/Tübingen 1989-1990, Brücke Museum et al., p. 17).
Catalogue Raisonné
Hoberg/Jansen, Skizzenbücher II 1904/08 p. 8 und p. 8a, p. 32 (numbers interchanged)
Certificate
With an expertise by Otto Stangl, Munich dated 9 February 1978
Provenance
Maria Marc, Ried; Galerie Stangl, Munich (1978); private collection since, Berlin
Literature
Klaus Lankheit, Franz Marc. Katalog der Werke, Cologne 1970, no. 398, p. 129; Hermann Bünemann, Franz Marc. Zeichnungen, Aquarelle, Munich 1952, illus. no. 2