August Macke Enter a
feeling, not
a gallery.
Choose a mood and the room itself answers — the light cools or warms, the air changes pace, and only the works that carry that feeling step forward from the dark. Everything else recedes into shadow.
August Macke
Early Life, Family and Training The story of August Macke begins in the town of Meschede, Germany, where he was born on January 3, 1887. He was the only son born to August Friedrich Hermann Macke, a building contractor and amateur artist, and Maria Florentine. His childhood was shaped by the shifting fortunes of his father’s company, which brought the family to Cologne and later to Bonn. Even as a young boy, the pull of visual expressi
on was evident; he spent his early years sketching and designing sets for school plays, finding a way to translate his surroundings onto paper long before he ever stepped into a formal academy. His formal education in the arts began in earnest when he arrived at the Düsseldorf Academy, where he studied from 1904 to 1906. Under the guidance of Adolf Maennchen, he learned the discipline of traditional technique, yet his spirit seemed to…