Franz Marc Museum in Kochel am See Opens Exhibition on Der Blaue Reiter Abstraction

The Franz Marc Museum in Kochel am See, Bavaria, has opened a new exhibition titled "Der Blaue Reiter. Das Moment der Abstraktion" running until February 16, 2020. The show is prompted by a major new permanent loan: August Macke's 1913 painting "Café am See." It examines the diverse forms of abstraction developed by artists of Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) in the years just before World War I. Despite varied approaches influenced by Fauvism, Cubism, Orphism, and early abstraction, the artists shared a quest for the "spiritual in art"—an attempt to capture the essential core behind appearances. The exhibition draws largely from the museum's own collections, presenting paintings, drawings, graphics, sketchbooks, and oil sketches by many contemporaries of Franz Marc and August Macke. The museum, founded in 1986, is dedicated to Franz Marc, a leading German Expressionist, and was expanded in 2008 to include the Etta and Otto Stangl Foundation collection.