Between 1911 and 1914 Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc (two of the founding members of The Blue Rider artists’ group in Munich) believed that they were working together to create a new art for a new spiritual era that was about to dawn.  Influenced by a mix of ideas derived from German and Russian Romanticism, and Theosophy’s blending of Western and Eastern mysticism, Kandinsky and Marc created a symbolic art using colour symbolism to represent spiritual ideals and began to explore the possibilities of abstract art. Around 1913 this endeavour took an apocalyptic turn with both artists producing visions of devastating events which they believed were about to unfold and would hasten in a new era of spiritual perfection. The apocalypse did indeed take place, but it took the form of the destruction wrought by the First World War. Kandinsky, as an enemy alien, had to flee, first to Switzerland and then to his native Russia. Franz Marc joined the German army and died on the Western Front in 1916.