"Zwei Pferde" ("Two Horses"), 1910/11

Franz Marc's “Two Standing Nudes”, placed in the security of a reddish network of trees, one leaning loosely on a greenish glowing stone, show the close connection that Franz Marc feels between nature and living beings. The trees suggest that the female figures are surrounded by nature, and their “false colors” reinforce the expression of a world of emotions full of inwardness. At the same time it is a mystical, almost surreal world that seems to conceal and reveal a secret at the same time through the rock that shimmers green like a gemstone. Franz Marc formulated his painterly intentions in a letter to August Macke in 1911: “My whole endeavor is to become more inward, to give every colour and shape appearing in the picture an inward, unprovable necessity. The effect of real art can never be proven or explained. "