The Tower of Blue Horses

The Tower of Blue Horses (German: Der Turm der blauen Pferde) is a 1913 Expressionist oil painting by the German artist Franz Marc. It has been called one of his best works, but went missing in 1945.

The Tower of Blue Horses was a large work, 200 by 130 centimetres (6 ft 7 in × 4 ft 3 in). Most of the picture is occupied by a frontal view of four primarily blue horses, arranged in a tier to the right of centre, facing the viewer but with their heads turned to the left; the foremost horse seemed "only a little less than life size" to at least one writer. To the left of their rumps, which form the centre of the picture, is an abstract landscape; above it is an orange rainbow on a yellow background. The foremost horse has a crescent moon on its chest, and crosses on its body which suggest stars.

Marc created the painting in summer 1913. A preliminary sketch in ink and gouache survives in the form of a new year's postcard for that year to the poet Else Lasker-Schüler, one of 28 painted postcards which the artist sent to her and which she answered in illustrated letters later used in her novel Malik. The Blue Horses sketch uses her favourite colour, blue, and personal symbols of hers, the moon and stars. This is now in the Munich State Graphics Collection. The large-format painting was one of seven works by Marc exhibited that autumn in the First German Autumn Salon (Erster Deutscher Herbstsalon).

After World War I, The Tower of Blue Horses was one of the works by Marc acquired for the new contemporary annexe of the Berlin National Gallery housed in the Kronprinzenpalais. It was removed from there as part of the "cleansing" of modern art works under the Nazis, and included in the Degenerate Art exhibition which opened in July 1937 in Munich. However, in response to a protest by veterans because Marc had died fighting for his country in the war, the painting was removed and was not included in the exhibition when it opened in Berlin. At that time it was valued at 80,000 Reichsmarks. In spring 1936, now valued at 20,000 RM, it was then transferred to Hermann Goering's custody as part of a select group of valuable modernist paintings which also included two other works by Marc. Goering sold at least some of these at a considerable profit, but appears not to have sold The Tower of Blue Horses, which went missing at war's end.

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