August Macke August Macke ( 3 January 1887 – 26 September 1914 ) was one of the leading members of the German Expressionist group Der Blaue Reiter ( The Blue Rider ) . He lived during a particularly innovative time for German art he saw the development of the main German Expressionist movements as well as the arrival of the successive avant - garde movements which were forming in the rest of Europe . Like a true artist of his time , Macke knew how to integrate into his painting the elements of the avant - garde which most interested him . Early life and studies . August Robert Ludwig Macke was born in Germany on 3 January 1887 , in Meschede , Westphalia . He was the only son of August Friedrich Hermann Macke ( 1845 – 1904 ) , a building contractor and amateur artist , and his wife , Maria Florentine , née Adolph , ( 1848 – 1922 ) , who came from a farming family in Westphalia ' s Sauerland region . Shortly after August ' s birth the family settled at Cologne , where Macke was educated at the Kreuzgymnasium ( 1897 - 1900 ) and became a friend of Hans Thuar , who would also become an artist . In 1900 , when he was thirteen , the family moved to Bonn , where Macke studied at the Realgymnasium and became a friend of Walter Gerhardt and Gerhardt ' s sister , Elisabeth , whom he would marry a few years later . The first artistic works to make an impression on the boy were his father ' s drawings , the Japanese prints collected by his friend Thuar ' s father and the works of Arnold Böcklin which he saw on a visit to Basel in 1900 . In 1904 Macke ' s father died , and in that year Macke enrolled at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf , under Adolf Maennchen ( 1904 - 1906 ) . During this period he also took evening classes under Fritz Helmut Ehmke ( 1905 ) , did some work as a stage and costume designer at the Schauspielhaus Düsseldorf , and visited northern Italy ( 1905 ) and Netherlands , Belgium and Britain ( 1906 ) . Artistic career 1907 - 1914 . Thereafter Macke lived most of his creative life in Bonn , with the exception of a few periods spent at Lake Thun in Switzerland and various trips to Paris , Italy , the Netherlands and Tunisia . In Paris , where he traveled for the first time in 1907 , Macke saw the work of the Impressionists , and shortly after he went to Berlin and spent a few months in Lovis Corinth ' s studio . His style was formed within the mode of French Impressionism and Post - impressionism and later went through a Fauve period . In 1909 he married Elisabeth Gerhardt . In 1910 , through his friendship with Franz Marc , Macke met Kandinsky and for a while shared the non - objective aesthetic and the mystical and symbolic interests of Der Blaue Reiter . Macke ' s meeting with Robert Delaunay in Paris in 1912 was to be a sort of revelation for him . Delaunay ' s chromatic Cubism , which Apollinaire had called Orphism , influenced Macke ' s art from that point onwards . His " Shops Windows " can be considered a personal interpretation of Delaunay ' s " Windows , " combined with the simultaneity of images found in Italian Futurism . The exotic atmosphere of Tunisia , where Macke traveled in April 1914 with Paul Klee and Louis Moilliet was fundamental for the creation of the luminist approach of his final period , during which he produced a series of works now considered masterpieces . August Macke ' s oeuvre can be considered as Expressionism ( in its original German flourishing between 1905 and 1925 ) , and also as part of Fauvism . The paintings concentrate primarily on expressing feelings and moods rather than reproducing objective reality , usually distorting colour and form . Macke ' s career was cut short by his early death in the second month of the First World War at the front in Champagne , France , on 26 September 1914 . His final painting , " " , depicts the mood of gloom that settled after the outbreak of war . This was also the same year that he painted the famous painting , Turkisches Cafe in Munchen 1914 ! August Macke Prize . The August Macke Prize , was given the first time in 1959 by the districts Arnsberg , Brilon , Olpe and Meschede , town of birth of August Macke in Germany . August - Macke - Haus . The August - Macke - Haus is a museum dedicated to August Macke founded in 1991 . It is located in Macke ' s former home in Bonn , where he lived from 1911 to 1914 .