Deer in the Forest I

Deer nestle among the trees of a forest that has shattered into crystalline, overlapping planes of green, blue, and rust, the animals and their habitat fused into a single faceted rhythm. Franz Marc, co-founder of the Blue Rider, sought through animals a purer spiritual harmony with nature, and here he dissolves the deer almost entirely into their colored, prismatic surroundings. Now in the Phillips Collection in Washington, Deer in the Forest pushes his animal subjects toward abstraction - creature and world interpenetrating, the gentle deer at one with the shimmering geometry of the woods.