Franz Marc was born in Munich, Germany. The son of a landscape painter, he decided to become an artist after a year of military service interrupted his plans to study philology. During a visit to France, he was introduced to Japanese woodcuts and the work of the Impressionists in Paris. Marc is best known for his paintings of animals,especially horses and deer, in which he attempted to express his mystical veneration of nature. In paintings such as Blue Horses, he used stylized lines and curves and brilliant unrealistic color to create and heighten the sense of nature idealized. After 1913, in response to cubism and futurism, he turned to abstraction, creating moods of clashing, discordant uncertainty. He was killed in action during World War I.