Franz Marc (1880-1916)'s fame today rests above all on his animal paintings. The popularity of his missing Tower of Blue Horses rivals the flower paintings of Emil Nolde. But while Nolde lived to paint to a ripe old age, the period in which Marc created his best-known pictures was limited to a bare four years. It took Marc ten years to pass from the traditional painting of the Munich Academy, via various stylistic excursions, to the language of form which finally crystallized into his personal style. During this time - around 1910 -, he met like-minded artists such as August Macke (1887-1914) and Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944). The years between 1911 and 1914 saw not only the production of his most important works but also his publication, with Kandinsky, of the "Blaue Reiter" almanac, his organization of the exhibition of the same name and his emergence as an influential force in the German art world. These politico-cultural activities and his - in part militant - writings on painting offer vital insights into the artist himself. In 1914, just as he began to free himself from the object and produce his earliest abstract paintings, Marc volunteered for military service. Two years later he fell - at the age of just thirty-six - at Verdun.