Franz Marc's Lost Masterpiece 'The Tower of Blue Horses' on Sky Arte

On May 3, 2018, Sky Arte HD aired an episode of 'Il mistero dei capolavori perduti' focusing on Franz Marc's 'The Tower of Blue Horses' (1913). Marc, a theology student turned painter trained at the Academy of Munich, was known for his chromatic spirituality and co-founded Der Blaue Reiter with Wassily Kandinsky and August Macke in 1911. Before WWI, he retreated to Bavaria and painted the work, sending a sketch to poet Else Lasker-Schüler. Marc died in battle in 1916. The painting was later acquired by the German National Gallery in Berlin, but in 1937 the Nazis confiscated it for the Degenerate Art exhibition. After protests from Marc's former regiment, it was removed and ended up in Hermann Göring's private collection. It disappeared after WWII, last seen in a house in East Berlin (Haus am Waldsee, now an art gallery). In 2017, exhibitions at Haus Waldsee and Neue Pinakothek in Munich featured contemporary German artists responding to the loss. Factum Arte is now analyzing Marc's palette at Lenbachhaus in Munich to aid in the search.