Three girls in yellow straw hats I

As a member of the German Der Blaue Reiter movement, August Macke first encountered the work of French painter Robert Delaunay in 1911. He was deeply impressed. From then on, the influence of Delaunay’s vibrant and luminous Cubism – which the poet Apollinaire dubbed Orphism – is clearly apparent in Macke’s work. Without entirely abandoning the depiction of reality, he uses rhythmical accords of colour and light to express the inner spiritual strength of people and the natural world around them. Macke died in the trenches just a year after painting this work. Franz Marc, who was likewise soon to perish at the front, wrote about the death of his friend, ‘We painters know well that with the loss of his harmony, the colour in German art will become many shades paler, a duller, drier resonance. For all of us, he gave colour its most vivid and beautiful resonance, clear and bright as his whole life was.’