The Tower of Blue Horses is equally known for its aesthetic and artistic significance, and for its fascinating history. The large canvas (200x130cm) is representative of the height of Marc’s artistic achievement. Marc’s preparatory work is visible in The Tower of Blue Horses (1912). The artist sent this ink and gouache sketch on a postcard to the German Jewish poet Else Lasker-Schüler, who was one of the few women affiliated with the Expressionist movement.
The artist created a tight composition, in which all of the elements move upward. This vertical motion is mainly established through color. In essence, the bottom of the painting is a deeply saturated blue that gradually transitions to light yellow and orange tones in the rainbow on the top. Like in other artworks, Marc applied his theory of color symbolism to the painting. The blue symbolized the male principle, severe and spiritual, and the yellow marked the female principle, gentle, cheerful, and sensual. The blue and red in the bottom created a high intensity, which needed to be broken up with the softness of the yellow. Besides, orange and blue are complementary colors, and in Marc’s color theory, this combination was harmonious and celebratory. Like the title suggests, the composition can be interpreted as a cluster of horses. The four horses possibly signify the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, which relate to the atmosphere and tension before World War I. At the same time, given Marc’s interest in Futurist art, this could be an interpretation of how Futurist painters, like Giacomo Balla, represented a movement in paintings like Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash (1912). If so, the tower of horses would be a rhythmical repetition of the successive movement of a single horse.
In the fall of 1913, the painting was exhibited in the First German Autumn Salon in Berlin. The exhibition was modeled after the French Salon d’Automne (Autumn Salon) and was the largest and most significant exhibition held in Germany before World War I. After World War I, the painting was acquired for the contemporary section of the National Gallery in Berlin. In 1937, the German Nazi Party launched its campaign against modern art and began confiscating artworks that they considered ‘degenerate’ from museums and galleries. The painting was included in the Degenerate Art exhibition that opened in July 1937 in Munich. This decision caused considerable controversy since Marc was killed while serving Germany during World War I. After a protest by the association of German officers, the painting was removed from the Berlin opening.
For a while, the artwork was owned by Herman Goering, the commander of the German Luftwaffe, and one of the most influential members of the Nazi Party. Goering used his position to select his favorite pieces from the confiscated and looted artworks for his private collection, which also contained two other works by Marc. Various accounts claimed that the painting was almost destroyed and then saved on multiple occasions; however, after 1945, it vanished without a trace. Throughout the years, there were several reported sightings and speculations regarding the painting’s whereabouts. Still, no official record of The Tower of Blue Horses exists after 1945.
The Tower of Blue Horses (German: Der Turm der blauen Pferde) is a 1913 Expressionist oil painting by the German artist Franz Marc. It has been called one of his best works, but went missing in 1945.
The Tower of Blue Horses was a large work, 200 by 130 centimetres (6 ft 7 in × 4 ft 3 in). Most of the picture is occupied by a frontal view of four primarily blue horses, arranged in a tier to the right of centre, facing the viewer but with their heads turned to the left; the foremost horse seemed "only a little less than life size" to at least one writer. To the left of their rumps, which form the centre of the picture, is an abstract landscape; above it is an orange rainbow on a yellow background. The foremost horse has a crescent moon on its chest, and crosses on its body which suggest stars.
Marc created the painting in summer 1913. A preliminary sketch in ink and gouache survives in the form of a new year's postcard for that year to the poet Else Lasker-Schüler, one of 28 painted postcards which the artist sent to her and which she answered in illustrated letters later used in her novel Malik. The Blue Horses sketch uses her favourite colour, blue, and personal symbols of hers, the moon and stars. This is now in the Munich State Graphics Collection. The large-format painting was one of seven works by Marc exhibited that autumn in the First German Autumn Salon (Erster Deutscher Herbstsalon).
After World War I, The Tower of Blue Horses was one of the works by Marc acquired for the new contemporary annexe of the Berlin National Gallery housed in the Kronprinzenpalais. It was removed from there as part of the "cleansing" of modern art works under the Nazis, and included in the Degenerate Art exhibition which opened in July 1937 in Munich. However, in response to a protest by veterans because Marc had died fighting for his country in the war, the painting was removed and was not included in the exhibition when it opened in Berlin. At that time it was valued at 80,000 Reichsmarks. In spring 1936, now valued at 20,000 RM, it was then transferred to Hermann Göring's custody as part of a select group of valuable modernist paintings which also included two other works by Marc. Göring sold at least some of these at a considerable profit, but appears not to have sold The Tower of Blue Horses, which went missing at war's end.
Edwin Redslob (de), an art historian who became Rector of the Free University of Berlin, wrote in 1977 that he had seen the painting in the Haus am Waldsee in Zehlendorf, Berlin, while still under Soviet occupation, i.e., in the first half of 1945, and the journalist Joachim Nawrocki reported having seen it in the adjacent youth hostel in the winter of the Berlin blockade, 1948/49, with two or three slits cut in it. Other statements and theories about the fate of the painting that have been published include its having been destroyed at Carinhall when Göring had the house blown up as the Russians advanced towards it in 1945, its having been in the Prussian Chamber of Deputies, and its being in Switzerland, most likely in a bank safe in Zurich; in 2001 an art collector claimed to have been offered it for sale. Art historian Roland März (de) put the painting on the catalogue cover when he organised an exhibition on the German Expressionists in 1986 at the (then East German) National Gallery, hoping that "a little old lady from the eastern Ore Mountains would come into [his] office and unroll a canvas out of which the crystals of blue pigment would spill", and has continued to search for it, but it has not reappeared.
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