August Macke

Alfred Flechtheim and August Macke

Macke’s early work is influenced by the French Impressionists and Henri Matisse. Through his friendship with Franz Marc he gained contact to the Blauer Reiter group of artists, participated in their exhibitions in 1911/12 and wrote an article for their Almanac. His very individual style that differed from that of other members of the Blauer Reiter aimed to link the Fauve artists’ harmonious compositions of pure colour with the angular, fractured structure of Analytic Cubism. Macke was influenced by the theory and works of Robert Delaunay which were marked by their powerfully expressive use of colour. In 1913 August Macke organised the ‘Rheinische Expressionisten’ exhibition – that included some of his own works – in Bonn where he was living at that time. After moving from Bonn to Lake Thun he continued to expand on his typical subjects – people strolling in the open air, shop windows and girls bathing. His artistic objective was to capture the real world saturated in bright colours. Shortly after the outbreak of World War I, in which Macke served as an officer, he fell in the Champagne region in France.

Macke’s art was defamed by the National Socialists. Almost fifty works were confiscated from German museums and shown at the ‘Degenerate Art’ exhibition in 1937. However, due to protests from the Deutscher Offiziersbund, they were soon removed.

Macke’s time in Bonn from 1910–13 was marked by his work as an exhibition curator and as an artist. He forged ties to local groups of artists, collectors and dealers. One of these was Alfred Flechtheim who, like Macke, was involved in organising the Internationale Kunstausstellung des Sonderbundes Westdeutscher Kunstfreunde und Künstler in 1912. In 1913 Flechtheim arranged for the ‘Rheinische Expressionisten’ exhibition of the same name, organised by Macke and held in the bookshop of the publisher Friedrich Cohen in Bonn, to be shown in Düsseldorf. In 1932, the year before Flechtheim left Germany, he devoted a solo exhibition to Macke’s work.