Dream II

Dream II (1913) at the Kunstmuseum Bern belongs to a body of work in which Franz Marc pushed toward dreamlike, ambiguous subject matter in the period immediately before the outbreak of the First World War. Working on cardboard rather than canvas, Marc here engaged with a more intimate scale and a surface with different absorbent qualities that influenced his handling of paint and colour. The dream as subject matter connects Marc to the broader German Expressionist interest in the unconscious and to the Symbolist legacy that fed into much pre-war avant-garde work. By 1913 Marc was increasingly preoccupied with apocalyptic imagery; his Fate of the Animals from that year is among the most anguished pre-war European paintings, and several critics have read Marc's entire late output as permeated by a premonition of catastrophe. Dream II reflects this mood while maintaining the fragmented, prismatic visual language he had developed through his engagement with Delaunay, Futurism, and Cubism. The Kunstmuseum Bern holds significant holdings of German Expressionist work, and this painting represents an important document of the movement's intensity just before war destroyed the world that had produced it. Marc was killed at Verdun in March 1916 aged 36.

Mixed media on cardboard with Marc's characteristic prismatic colour fragmentation. The cardboard support produces a more matte surface than canvas, affecting paint absorption and the luminosity of colour fields. Geometric faceting of form is fully developed, with figure and ground interpenetrating.