Yellow Cow

1911

Oil on canvas, 140.7 × 189.2 cm. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York

A leaping cow fills a landscape of orange ground, green plants and blue hills. The Guggenheim, following scholar Mark Rosenthal, reads it as a possible private wedding picture.

In that reading the cow may stand for Maria Franck, whom Marc married that year.
Look at the blue mountains at the top: Rosenthal sees them as a self-portrait of Marc.
Smooth, rounded animal forms play against hard black tree trunks that lock the cow in place.
Marc gave colors set roles, yellow for the feminine and blue for the masculine and spiritual; here the two meet in the cow and the mountains above it.
It belongs to the museum's founding collection; its accession number points to 1949.

Color symbolism: Giving each color a fixed meaning or feeling, so that color carries ideas instead of describing appearances.

Image: Wikimedia Commons · PD-Art