A vaca amarela

In 1911 Franz Marc and Wassily Kandinsky drew together a loose group of artists in Munich they called Der Blaue Reiter, the Blue Rider, all trying to reach something spiritual through pure colour. Marc worked out a private code of hues. Yellow, he said, was gentle, cheerful and female, blue was spiritual and male, and red was the heavy earth. That same year he married Maria Franck, and one art historian has read this leaping yellow cow as a hidden wedding portrait, Maria as the joyful animal and Marc himself the solid blue hills behind. Whether or not that was his intent, the cow kicks up its heels against a landscape of ringing red, green and violet. Marc had five years left before he was killed at Verdun.