August Macke

In April 1914 August Macke traveled to Tunisia, in North Africa, with fellow painters Paul Klee and Louis Moilliet, chasing the strong light and color of the Mediterranean coast. He came back with some of the brightest, most confident paintings of his short career, canvases built from clean geometric color planes he had been developing since meeting the painter Robert Delaunay in Paris two years before.

Macke was one of the founding circle of Der Blaue Reiter, the Blue Rider, an expressionist group formed in Munich in 1911 around the painters Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc. He showed in both of the group's exhibitions and contributed to its almanac. He was 27 years old, married, and the father of two young sons.

When Germany went to war that August, Macke was drafted and sent to the Western Front in France. His last finished painting, made in the weeks before he left, was called Farewell and showed a group of figures in muted, sombre color, a sharp break from the Tunisian work of only months earlier. He was killed in action near Perthes-lès-Hurlus, in the Champagne region of France, on 26 September 1914, five weeks into the war.