Van Gogh • Artist Biographies • Auguste Macke

Auguste Macke

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August Macke was born in Meschtede, in the Ruhr Valley, but he spent his childhood in Cologne and in Bonn before moving to Düsseldorf to study art. He began to make frequent visits to Paris in 1907, and it was here that he came into contact with the Cubists. Between 1909 and 1910, Macke met Kandinsky and Franz Marc in Munich and worked with them to prepare the "Blaue Reiter" almanac for their first exhibition. Macke, like Marc, was enthusiastic about the work of the French Cubist Robert Delaunay. Macke's artistic interests were directed towards gentle figurations of women and children. He painted his subjects in domestic, interior and exterior poses, usually, by applying his bright, warm color in large, strongly outlined areas, and sometimes using varicolored squares for bright light in his backgrounds, in the manner of Delaunay.