Mythical Creature II (Horse) (1913) - Franz Marc - Canvas Print

“Mythical Creature II (Horse)” compresses a horse and its surroundings into a restless mosaic of vermilion, cobalt, emerald, black, and chalky white. The animal seems monumental yet strangely hidden: a curved back, lowered head, and sweeping neck must be discovered among wedges that resemble leaves, beams, and colored glass. Rather than opening a believable landscape, the canvas print makes every shape press toward the surface, producing the visual equivalent of a crowded fanfare. Sharp diagonals collide with broad arcs, while patches of visible, energetic handling keep the geometry from becoming cold or mechanical.

Created in 1913, the image belongs to the Expressionist world in which Franz Marc treated animals not as decorative wildlife but as carriers of instinct, innocence, and spiritual intensity. He famously developed a private color symbolism—blue could suggest spirituality, while red could embody heavy or brutal force—yet this blazing horse refuses to behave like a tidy code. On this canvas print, creature and habitat appear to share one nervous system. The title calls it mythical, but the joke may be that the beast is not invented at all; it has simply galloped so far into abstraction that ordinary anatomy can barely keep up.