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Lyonel Feininger American (New York City, 1871 - 1956, New York City) View objects by this artist.

Feininger's early dedication to music - his father was a violinist of international reputation and a composer; his mother a singer and pianist, was the cause for his move from New York to Germany at the age of 16.  There, his studies switched to painting and drawing, which he undertook in Hamburg, Berlin and Paris.  Referring to drawing, for which he was largely self-taught, he stated, "I am prouder of the that fact, and take more pleasure in pen drawing than anything else." (f.n. Scheyer) Feininger's career flourished in Germany; he would not make the United States his home until 1937.  In Berlin in 1917, he was invited to show with Der Blau Reiter group and held a solo exhibition at Der Sturm. From 1919-24, he taught painting and graphics at the Bauhaus, Weimar.  In the U.S. he exhibited in Galka Scheyer's Blue Four along with Kandinsky, Klee and Jawlensky.  The National Gallery, Berlin, presented a retrospective (1931).  This early success was tempered in 1937 when his work was show in the Nazi exhibition "Degenerate Art." Not long after his return to the U.S., in 1936, retrospectives followed: Museum of Modern Art, NY (1944) and the Cleveland Museum of Art (1951).  

Lyonel Feininger found permission in the work of the French Cubists to explore the rhythms and interactions of nature and the proportions of the man made world--architecture, bridges, sea-going vessels, and locomotives.  His work paralleled that of his friend, Robert Delaunay, who invented color systems which he imposed on church architecture, the Eiffel Tower, and the city of Paris.  Feininger intuitively extended Cubist line and plane into his observations. He once joked that his work could be called "prism-ism."  No doubt shaped by his early musical training, he pushed  to incorporate a multiplicity of interacting building forms and styles, and to fuse them into an orchestral unity.

Upon returning to New York City, he saw the city of his childhood through the lens of his separation, and said, "New York is the most amazing city in its atmosphere, color and contrasts, in the whole world." He did not paint for two years after returning to New York, but drew incessantly, seeking unusual viewpoints, both high and low, to better reflect the crowded juxtaposition of many-layered living in the great city.  Once ready to paint, the drawings provided themes and compositional ideas which brought forth an astonishing body of new work in the artist's late sixties.


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