Lyonel Charles Feininger (July 17, 1871January 13, 1956) was a
German-American
German Americans (german: Deutschamerikaner, ) are Americans who have full or partial German ancestry. With an estimated size of approximately 43 million in 2019, German Americans are the largest of the self-reported ancestry groups by the Unite ...
painter
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called the "matrix" or "support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, and ai ...
, and a leading exponent of
Expressionism
Expressionism is a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Northern Europe around the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it rad ...
. He also worked as a
caricaturist
A caricaturist is an artist who specializes in drawing caricatures.
List of caricaturists
* Abed Abdi (born 1942)
* Al Hirschfeld (1903–2003)
* Alex Gard (1900–1948)
* Alexander Saroukhan (1898–1977)
* Alfred Grévin (1827–1892)
* Alf ...
and
comic strip
A comic strip is a sequence of drawings, often cartoons, arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions. Traditionally, throughout the 20th and into the 21st ...
artist. He was born and grew up in New York City, traveling to Germany at 16 to study and perfect his art. He started his career as a cartoonist in 1894 and met with much success in this area. He was also a commercial caricaturist for 20 years for magazines and newspapers in the USA and Germany. At the age of 36, he started to work as a fine artist. He also produced a large body of photographic works between 1928 and the mid 1950s, but he kept these primarily within his circle of friends. He was also a pianist and composer, with several piano compositions and fugues for organ extant.
Life and work
Lyonel Feininger was born to German-American violinist and composer Karl Feininger and American singer Elizabeth Feininger. He was born and grew up in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
, but traveled to Germany at the age of 16 in 1887Cooper, Philip. ''Cubism''. London: Phaidon, 1995, p. 90. to study. In 1888, he moved to Berlin and studied at the Königliche Akademie Berlin under
Ernst Hancke
Ernst is both a surname and a given name, the German, Dutch, and Scandinavian form of Ernest. Notable people with the name include:
Surname
* Adolf Ernst (1832–1899) German botanist known by the author abbreviation "Ernst"
* Anton Ernst (1975- ...
. He continued his studies at art schools in Berlin with
Karl Schlabitz Karl may refer to:
People
* Karl (given name), including a list of people and characters with the name
* Karl der Große, commonly known in English as Charlemagne
* Karl Marx, German philosopher and political writer
* Karl of Austria, last Austria ...
, and in Paris with sculptor
Filippo Colarossi
Filippo Colarossi (21 April 1841 in Picinisco – August 1906) was an Italian artist's model and sculptor who founded the Académie Colarossi in Paris between 1879–1880.
He is claimed to have died on 25 August 1906 in Paris. however, Duval sta ...
. He started as a caricaturist for several magazines including ''
Harper's Round Table
''Harper's Young People'' was an American children's magazine between 1879 and 1899. The first issue appeared in the fall of 1879. It was published by Harper & Brothers. It was Harper's fourth magazine to be established, after '' Harper's Magazine ...
'', ''
Harper's Young People
''Harper's Young People'' was an American children's magazine between 1879 and 1899. The first issue appeared in the fall of 1879. It was published by Harper & Brothers. It was Harper's fourth magazine to be established, after '' Harper's Magazine ...
'', ''Humoristische Blätter'', ''
Lustige Blätter
''Lustige Blätter'' (German: ''Comic Pages'') was a satirical magazine published between 1885 and 1944 in Berlin. Its subtitle was ''schönstes buntes Witzblatt Deutschlands'' (German: ''Germany's most beautiful colorful humor paper'').
Histor ...
'', ''
Das Narrenschiff
''Ship of Fools'' (Modern German: , la, Stultifera Navis, original medieval German title: ) is a satirical allegory in German verse published in 1494 in Basel, Switzerland, by the humanist and theologian Sebastian Brant. It is the most fam ...
'', ''
Berliner Tageblatt
The ''Berliner Tageblatt'' or ''BT'' was a German language newspaper published in Berlin from 1872 to 1939. Along with the '' Frankfurter Zeitung'', it became one of the most important liberal German newspapers of its time.
History
The ''Berlin ...
'' and ''
Ulk
The German language satirical magazine ''Ulk'' was printed from 1872 until 1933 by the publisher Rudolf Mosse. Its headquarters was in Berlin, Germany.
Initially it was an independent weekly paper as ''Wochenblatt für Humor und Satire''. It ...
''.
In 1900, he met
Clara Fürst
Clara Fürst (15 February 1879 in Berlin – 1944 in Auschwitz) was a concert pianist. Daughter of the painter she was the first wife of a German-American painter, and leading exponent of Expressionism, Lyonel Feininger. The Fürst family haile ...
, daughter of the painter Gustav Fürst. He married her in 1901, and they had two daughters. In 1905, he separated from his wife after meeting Julia Berg. He married Berg in 1908 and the couple had three boys.
The artist was represented with drawings at the exhibitions of the annual
Berlin Secession
The Berlin Secession was an art movement established in Germany on May 2, 1898. Formed in reaction to the Association of Berlin Artists, and the restrictions on contemporary art imposed by Kaiser Wilhelm II, 65 artists "seceded," demonstrating ag ...
in the years 1901 through 1903.
Feininger's career as cartoonist started in 1894. He was working for several German, French and American magazines. In February 1906, when a quarter of Chicago's population was of German descent,
James Keeley
James Keeley (October 14, 1867 – June 7, 1934) was an American newspaper editor and publisher. He served as managing editor of the ''Chicago Tribune'' from 1898 to 1914.(8 June 1934)James Keeley, Editor, dies ''Gettysburg Times'' (Associat ...
, editor of The ''
Chicago Tribune
The ''Chicago Tribune'' is a daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, United States, owned by Tribune Publishing. Founded in 1847, and formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" (a slogan for which WGN radio and television ar ...
'' traveled to Germany to procure the services of the most popular humor artists. He recruited Feininger to illustrate two comic strips " The Kin-der-Kids" and " Wee Willie Winkie's World" for the ''Chicago Tribune''. The strips were noted for their fey humor and graphic experimentation. He also worked as a commercial caricaturist for 20 years for various newspapers and magazines in both the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
and
Germany
Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...
. Later,
Art Spiegelman
Art Spiegelman (; born Itzhak Avraham ben Zeev Spiegelman on February 15, 1948) is an American cartoonist, editor, and comics advocate best known for his graphic novel ''Maus''. His work as co-editor on the comics magazines ''Arcade (comics maga ...
wrote in ''
The New York Times Book Review
''The New York Times Book Review'' (''NYTBR'') is a weekly paper-magazine supplement to the Sunday edition of ''The New York Times'' in which current non-fiction and fiction books are reviewed. It is one of the most influential and widely rea ...
,'' that Feininger's comics have "achieved a breathtaking formal grace unsurpassed in the history of the medium."
Feininger started working as a fine artist at the age of 36. He was a member of the '' Berliner Sezession'' in 1909, and he was associated with
German expressionist
German Expressionism () consisted of several related creative movements in Germany before the First World War that reached a peak in Berlin during the 1920s. These developments were part of a larger Expressionist movement in north and central ...
groups:
Die Brücke
The Brücke (Bridge), also Künstlergruppe Brücke or KG Brücke was a group of German expressionist artists formed in Dresden in 1905. Founding members were Fritz Bleyl, Erich Heckel, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff. Later memb ...
, the
Novembergruppe
The November Group (german: Novembergruppe) was a group of German expressionist artists and architects. Formed on 3 December 1918, they took their name from the month of the German Revolution.
The group was led by Max Pechstein and César Klein ...
Blaue Reiter
''Der Blaue Reiter'' (The Blue Rider) is a designation by Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc for their exhibition and publication activities, in which both artists acted as sole editors in the almanac of the same name, first published in mid-May ...
circle and Die Blaue Vier (The Blue Four). His first solo exhibit was at Sturm Gallery in Berlin, 1917. When
Walter Gropius
Walter Adolph Georg Gropius (18 May 1883 – 5 July 1969) was a German-American architect
An architect is a person who plans, designs and oversees the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to provide services in conne ...
founded the
Bauhaus
The Staatliches Bauhaus (), commonly known as the Bauhaus (), was a German art school operational from 1919 to 1933 that combined crafts and the fine arts.Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 4th edn., 200 ...
in Germany in 1919, Feininger was his first faculty appointment, and became the master artist in charge of the printmaking workshop.Muir, Laura and Nathan Timpano. Lyonel Feininger: Photographs 1928-1939.
From 1909 until 1918, Feininger spent summer vacations on the island of
Usedom
Usedom (german: Usedom , pl, Uznam ) is a Baltic Sea island in Pomerania, divided between Germany and Poland. It is the second largest Pomeranian island after Rügen, and the most populous island in the Baltic Sea.
It is north of the Szczecin ...
to recover and to get new inspiration. Typical of works from this period were marine settings from the shores of the Baltic See (Ostsee). He continued to create paintings and drawings of Benz for the rest of his life, even after returning to live in the United States. A tour of the sites appearing in the works of Feininger follows a path with markers in the ground to guide visitors.
He designed the cover for the Bauhaus 1919 manifesto: an expressionist
woodcut
Woodcut is a relief printing technique in printmaking. An artist carves an image into the surface of a block of wood—typically with gouges—leaving the printing parts level with the surface while removing the non-printing parts. Areas that ...
'cathedral'. He taught at the Bauhaus for several years. Among the students who attended his workshops were
Ludwig Hirschfeld Mack
Ludwig Hirschfeld Mack (11 July 1893, in Frankfurt-am-Main – 7 January 1965, in Allambie Heights, in Sydney) was a German-born Australian artist.
His formative education was 1912–1914 at Debschitz art school in Munich. He studied at the ...
Nazi Party
The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (german: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), was a far-right politics, far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that crea ...
came to power in 1933, the situation became unbearable for Feininger and his wife. The Nazi Party declared his work to be "degenerate". They moved to America after his work was exhibited in the '
degenerate art
Degenerate art (german: Entartete Kunst was a term adopted in the 1920s by the Nazi Party in Germany to describe modern art. During the dictatorship of Adolf Hitler, German modernist art, including many works of internationally renowned artists, ...
' (''Entartete Kunst'') in 1936, but before the 1937 exhibition in
Munich
Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the States of Germany, German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the List of cities in Germany by popu ...
. He taught at
Mills College
Mills College at Northeastern University is a private college in Oakland, California and part of Northeastern University's global university system. Mills College was founded as the Young Ladies Seminary in 1852 in Benicia, California; it was ...
before returning to New York. He was elected to the
American Academy of Arts and Letters
The American Academy of Arts and Letters is a 300-member honor society whose goal is to "foster, assist, and sustain excellence" in American literature, music, and art. Its fixed number membership is elected for lifetime appointments. Its headqu ...
in 1955.
In addition to drawing, Feininger created art with painted toy figures being photographed in front of drawn backgrounds.
Feininger produced a large body of photographic works between 1928 - he was then already 58 years old - and the mid-1950s. He then lived and taught in Dessau, where his neighbor was the famous experimental photograph
László Moholy-Nagy
László Moholy-Nagy (; ; born László Weisz; July 20, 1895 – November 24, 1946) was a Hungarian painter and photographer as well as a professor in the Bauhaus school. He was highly influenced by constructivism and a strong advocate of the i ...
, who encouraged him. He kept his photographic work within his circle of friends, and it was not shared with the public in his lifetime. He gave some prints away to his colleagues
Walter Gropius
Walter Adolph Georg Gropius (18 May 1883 – 5 July 1969) was a German-American architect
An architect is a person who plans, designs and oversees the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to provide services in conne ...
and Alfred H. Barr Jr.
Feininger also had intermittent activity as a pianist and composer, with several piano compositions and fugues for organ extant. In tandem with the Whitney retrospective, the American Symphony Orchestra under Leon Botstein, at Carnegie Hall on 21 October 2011, performed three orchestral fugues written by Feininger. Barbara Haskell, curator of the Whitney exhibit, wrote that for his entire life, Feininger credited Bach with having been his "master in painting."
After his death on January 13, 1956, he was interred at Mount Hope Cemetery in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York. His sons,
Andreas Feininger
Andreas Bernhard Lyonel Feininger (December 27, 1906 – February 18, 1999) was an American photographer and a writer on photographic technique. He was noted for his dynamic black-and-white scenes of Manhattan and for studies of the structures ...
and
T. Lux Feininger
Theodore Lukas (alias T. Lux) Feininger (June 11, 1910 Berlin, Germany – July 7, 2011 Cambridge, Massachusetts) was a German-American painter, avant-garde photographer, author, and art teacher who was born in Berlin to , née Lilienfeld, and Ly ...
, both became noted artists, the former as a photographer and the latter as a photographer and painter. T. Lux Feininger died July 7, 2011 at the age of 101.
Major retrospectives
A major retrospective exhibition of Lyonel Feininger's work was put on in 2011-2012: it opened initially at the
Whitney Museum of American Art
The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is an art museum in the Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875–1942), ...
, June 30 through October 16, 2011, subsequently at the
Montreal Museum of Fine Arts
The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA; french: Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal, MBAM) is an art museum in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It is the largest art museum in Canada by gallery space. The museum is located on the historic Golden Square ...
, January 1 through May 13, 2012. The exhibition is described as "the first in Feininger's native country in more than forty-five years, and the first ever to include the full breadth of his art" and as "accompanied by a richly illustrated monograph with a feature essay that provides a broad overview of Feininger's career..." Many critics have argued that the artist's work was at its most mature around 1910 in works in which the power of Feininger as illustrator balance his abstract side; however, we have to consider the possibility that Feininger used cubism as a more artistically succinct tool to establish his version of the concept known as the objective correlative.
An important retrospective exhibition of Lyonel Feininger's photographic work took place Germany and the USA in 2011-2012, from
Berlin
Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...
(Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen) to Cambridge,
Massachusetts
Massachusetts (Massachusett language, Massachusett: ''Muhsachuweesut assachusett writing systems, məhswatʃəwiːsət'' English: , ), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is the most populous U.S. state, state in the New England ...
(
Busch-Reisinger Museum
The Harvard Art Museums are part of Harvard University and comprise three museums: the Fogg Museum (established in 1895), the Busch-Reisinger Museum (established in 1903), and the Arthur M. Sackler Museum (established in 1985), and four research ...
), through
Munich
Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the States of Germany, German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the List of cities in Germany by popu ...
Los Angeles
Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...
(
J. Paul Getty Museum
The J. Paul Getty Museum, commonly referred to as the Getty, is an art museum in Los Angeles, California housed on two campuses: the Getty Center and Getty Villa.
The Getty Center is located in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles and fea ...
).
In popular culture
Feininger's
"The Market Church at Halle" (1930) was prominently featured in the first three seasons of the iconic television show '' Bewitched '' hanging over the desk in Darren Stephens' office.
Art market
At a 2001
Christie's
Christie's is a British auction house founded in 1766 by James Christie (auctioneer), James Christie. Its main premises are on King Street, St James's in London, at Rockefeller Center in New York City and at Alexandra House in Hong Kong. It is ...
auction in London, Feininger's painting ''The Green Bridge'' (1909) was sold for £2.42 million.
At a 2007 Sotheby’s auction in New York, Feininger’s oil painting "Jesuits III" (1915) sold for $23,280,000.
At a 2017
Sotheby's
Sotheby's () is a British-founded American multinational corporation with headquarters in New York City. It is one of the world's largest brokers of fine and decorative art, jewellery, and collectibles. It has 80 locations in 40 countries, and ...
auction in New York, Feininger's oil painting ''Fin de séance'' (1910) sold for $5,637,500.Sotheby's New York 16 May 2017
Selected works
* 1907, ''Der weiße Mann'', (Collection Museo Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid)
* 1910, ''Straße im Dämmern'', (
Sprengel Museum
Sprengel Museum is a museum of modern art in Hanover, Lower Saxony, holding one of the most significant collections of modern art in Germany. It is located in a building situated adjacent to the Masch Lake (german: Maschsee) approximately south ...
North Carolina Museum of Art
The North Carolina Museum of Art (NCMA) is an art museum in Raleigh, North Carolina. It opened in 1956 as the first major museum collection in the country to be formed by state legislation and funding. Since the initial 1947 appropriation that e ...
Reynolda House Museum of American Art
The Reynolda House Museum of American Art displays a premiere collection of American art ranging from the colonial period to the present. Built in 1917 by Katharine Smith Reynolds and her husband R. J. Reynolds, founder of the R. J. Reynolds To ...
, Winston-Salem, NC)
* 1925, ''Barfüßerkirche in Erfurt I'', (
Staatsgalerie Stuttgart
The Staatsgalerie Stuttgart (, "State Gallery") is an art museum in Stuttgart, Germany, it opened in 1843. In 1984, the opening of the Neue Staatsgalerie (''New State Gallery'') designed by James Stirling transformed the once provincial gallery ...
)
* 1926, ''Barfüßerkirche II'' (''Church of the Minorities II'')
* 1929, ''Halle, Am Trödel'', ( Bauhaus-Archive, Berlin)
* 1931, ''Die Türme über der Stadt (Halle)'', (Museum Ludwig, Köln)
* 1936, ''Gelmeroda XIII'', (
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...
, New York)
* 1940, ''The River'', (
Worcester Art Museum
The Worcester Art Museum, also known by its acronym WAM, houses over 38,000 works of art dating from antiquity to the present day and representing cultures from all over the world. WAM opened in 1898 in Worcester, Massachusetts, and ranks among th ...
, MA)
See also
*
Cubism
Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture. In Cubist artwork, objects are analyzed, broken up and reassemble ...
References
Further reading
*
*
* Haskell, Barbara. ''Lyonel Feininger: At The Edge of the World''. Exhibition Catalogue. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 2011
*
*
* Muir, Laura and Nathan Timpano. ''Lyonel Feininger: Photographs, 1928-1939''. Cambridge: Harvard Art Museums and
Hatje Cantz
Hatje Cantz Verlag (English: Hatje Cantz Publishing) is a German book publisher specialising in photography, art, architecture and design. It was established in 1945 by Gerd HatjeLyonel Feininger: At the Edge of the World
Don Markstein's Toonopedia
Don Markstein's Toonopedia (subtitled A Vast Repository of Toonological Knowledge) is an online encyclopedia of print cartoons, comic strips and animation, initiated February 13, 2001. Donald D. Markstein, the sole writer and editor of Toonopedi ...