August Macke : Indians in Paradise

Born in Westphalia in 1887, artist August Macke, despite his German-based training, was greatly influenced by the work of French Impressionists he found in books and galleries. The startling use of color by the Fauves was also evident by 1910 when he befriended Franz Marc, a founding member of Der Blau Reider (The Blue Rider), a group of German Expressionist artists who collaborated on exhibitions and publications. In the few intervening years between their first meeting and their deaths in World War I battles (Macke in 1914, Marc in 1916), the two would not only explore Expressionism but experiment with the possibilities of Cubism.

Macke often declared his desire to create a “paradise” in his paintings. In 1911, Der Blau Rider challenged its members to explore primitive art. Macke, who had never crossed the Atlantic, set his focus on the romantic view of the vanishing Native American, which was not only popular in the United States, but in Europe at the time. This idea was fueled by the photographs of Edward Curtis which were widely distributed in Germany. During that year Macke would produce a series of three paintings, Indians, Indians on Horses (above), and Indians by a Tipi depicting his primitive paradise set in the by-gone era of Native American life as he imagined it. Even more than Curtis’ idealized photographs, Macke’s hybrid Impressionist/ Fauvist/Expressionist/Cubist style in these paintings creates yet another layer of sentimentality between the viewer and reality. In the end, Macke unknowingly cultivated the propaganda that was being disseminated in the early twentieth century, perpetuating the myth that obscured the true plight of America’s indigenous people.

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