Vasily Kandinsky (seated), Munich, 1911
Andre Derain exhibited works at Kandinsky’s New Artists Association in Munich. He took part in the Secessionist Der Blaue Reiter group show in 1912 and then the Armory Show in New York in 1913. Franz Marc, August Macke and Lyonel Feininger were thrilled. Their ideas strongly influenced both the Cubists and the German Expressionists eg Alexej von Jawlensky, Paul Klee, Albert Bloch and Gabriele Münter.
Kandinsky and Marc also influenced their Expressionist supporters’ creativity via the books they edited together: On the Spiritual In Art 1910 and The Blue Rider Almanac 1912. Marc's artistic philosophy showed that his colours spoke an emotional language, as though each colour could hit a specific note, seeking a spiritual truth.
Marc’s oeuvre was dominated by portraits of various animals, each one evoking a unique mood, and often fragmented. For Franz Marc, painting animals like Die Füchse/The Foxes (1913) represented a more innocent time. In this cubist painting, viewers silently watched the animals through a shattered window. It broke down natural forms into abstract forms in bold colours.
In his many works of horses, dogs and foxes, he wanted to convey a message about the natural world & its relation to humanity. And another thing. For Marc, animals brought relief from the pain and tension of modern life. How ironic that Marc painted his beloved animals until the painful end of his short life.
Why were artists, usually anti-violence, so anxious to get into WW1? And why against their beloved French artist-brothers? German artist-soldiers felt “War simply had to bring up grandeur, strength, dignity. To us it seemed a masculine act, a merry shootout on blossoming, blood-bedewed meadows” Ernst Junger. Franz Marc expected the war to bring a worldwide catharsis and a spiritual purging of humankind. Karl Schmidt-Rottluff looked forward to the chance to create something as powerful as could be.
![]()
Otto Dix was the artist who best depicted the emotional drama and psychological intensity of war. George Grosz volunteered for military service in 1914, in the hope that as a volunteer and not a conscript, he would not be sent to the front. Max Beckmann, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Lovis Corinth, Franz Marc and Conrad Felixmüller became soldier-artists. These German expressionist artists, plus Emil Nolde, Käthe Kollwitz, Egon Schiele, Erich Heckel and Max Ernst, were indeed branded as a threat to the German nation. Sadly the group came to an abrupt end when soldiers Marc and Macke were killed in WW1.
The Foxes was bought by Jewish businessman-banker Kurt Grawi in 1928. His properties were seized by the Nazi Party in 1935 and most of his art collection was seized and sold in the Jew Auction at Berlin’s Leo Spik auction house in 1937. Arrested on Kristallnacht-pogrom night, Grawi was locked up in Sachsenhausen Camp in 1938. After his release, he wrote in a letter saying he would use the funds from the art sale to flee Germany. Grawi was able to smuggle the Foxes painting out of Germany to Paris, then he fled to Chile in 1939. His wife and sons followed him to Chile later that year.
![]()
Marc, Dreaming Horse 1913,
In Apr 2021, the Cultural Commission unanimously voted to return the Marc painting (value $18–$36 mill). The Kunstpalast Museum Düsseldorf, which held The Foxes since 1962, quickly agreed to restitute the painting to Grawi’s heirs. But the 6-years-long case hadn't closed. The debate was closely followed by experts because of the work’s provenance. Whereas most works subject to restitution claims post-WW2 were “sold under duress” in Nazi Europe, this one was purchased at auction in New York in 1940. This debate could potentially redefine what it means for a work to have been sold under duress.
German art magazine Monopol’s experts advised the restitution of the work because they believed it had been sold under duress, even though its auction occurred outside the Nazi sphere of influence. The sale was so closely connected with Nazi persecution that the sale site became secondary. The heirs also believed that the exact sale site had no bearing on whether it should be returned. Grawi’s daughter-in-law Ingeburg Breit showed her in-laws had to sell everything of value in Nazi Germany to pay for the confiscatory charges on Jews and for the family to flee to Chile.
Answer: yes, the painting that has been the subject of a years-long restitution case will be returned by the City of Düsseldorf to the real owner's (Kurt Grawi) heirs. The City upheld the Cultural Commission's decision in April 2021.
Kandinsky and Marc also influenced their Expressionist supporters’ creativity via the books they edited together: On the Spiritual In Art 1910 and The Blue Rider Almanac 1912. Marc's artistic philosophy showed that his colours spoke an emotional language, as though each colour could hit a specific note, seeking a spiritual truth.
Marc’s oeuvre was dominated by portraits of various animals, each one evoking a unique mood, and often fragmented. For Franz Marc, painting animals like Die Füchse/The Foxes (1913) represented a more innocent time. In this cubist painting, viewers silently watched the animals through a shattered window. It broke down natural forms into abstract forms in bold colours.
In his many works of horses, dogs and foxes, he wanted to convey a message about the natural world & its relation to humanity. And another thing. For Marc, animals brought relief from the pain and tension of modern life. How ironic that Marc painted his beloved animals until the painful end of his short life.
Why were artists, usually anti-violence, so anxious to get into WW1? And why against their beloved French artist-brothers? German artist-soldiers felt “War simply had to bring up grandeur, strength, dignity. To us it seemed a masculine act, a merry shootout on blossoming, blood-bedewed meadows” Ernst Junger. Franz Marc expected the war to bring a worldwide catharsis and a spiritual purging of humankind. Karl Schmidt-Rottluff looked forward to the chance to create something as powerful as could be.
Marc, Die Füchse, 1913
Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf
Otto Dix was the artist who best depicted the emotional drama and psychological intensity of war. George Grosz volunteered for military service in 1914, in the hope that as a volunteer and not a conscript, he would not be sent to the front. Max Beckmann, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Lovis Corinth, Franz Marc and Conrad Felixmüller became soldier-artists. These German expressionist artists, plus Emil Nolde, Käthe Kollwitz, Egon Schiele, Erich Heckel and Max Ernst, were indeed branded as a threat to the German nation. Sadly the group came to an abrupt end when soldiers Marc and Macke were killed in WW1.
The Foxes was bought by Jewish businessman-banker Kurt Grawi in 1928. His properties were seized by the Nazi Party in 1935 and most of his art collection was seized and sold in the Jew Auction at Berlin’s Leo Spik auction house in 1937. Arrested on Kristallnacht-pogrom night, Grawi was locked up in Sachsenhausen Camp in 1938. After his release, he wrote in a letter saying he would use the funds from the art sale to flee Germany. Grawi was able to smuggle the Foxes painting out of Germany to Paris, then he fled to Chile in 1939. His wife and sons followed him to Chile later that year.
The Foxes somehow left Paris and was displayed at US art gallery Karl Nierendorf in 1939. Extensive provenance research by Düsseldorf couldn’t find when and where the painting was sold, and by whom. But somehow Die Füchse was smuggled out of Germany and sold at auction in New York in 1940, for an unknown price, to German-American film director William Dieterle. Owner of a German department store chain, Helmut Horten, bought it in 1961 and later donated it to the Kunstpalast Museum Düsseldorf.
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum NY
In Apr 2021, the Cultural Commission unanimously voted to return the Marc painting (value $18–$36 mill). The Kunstpalast Museum Düsseldorf, which held The Foxes since 1962, quickly agreed to restitute the painting to Grawi’s heirs. But the 6-years-long case hadn't closed. The debate was closely followed by experts because of the work’s provenance. Whereas most works subject to restitution claims post-WW2 were “sold under duress” in Nazi Europe, this one was purchased at auction in New York in 1940. This debate could potentially redefine what it means for a work to have been sold under duress.
German art magazine Monopol’s experts advised the restitution of the work because they believed it had been sold under duress, even though its auction occurred outside the Nazi sphere of influence. The sale was so closely connected with Nazi persecution that the sale site became secondary. The heirs also believed that the exact sale site had no bearing on whether it should be returned. Grawi’s daughter-in-law Ingeburg Breit showed her in-laws had to sell everything of value in Nazi Germany to pay for the confiscatory charges on Jews and for the family to flee to Chile.
Answer: yes, the painting that has been the subject of a years-long restitution case will be returned by the City of Düsseldorf to the real owner's (Kurt Grawi) heirs. The City upheld the Cultural Commission's decision in April 2021.