Lyonel Feininger

Lyonel Charles Adrian Feininger (* 17 July 1871 in New York; † 13 January 1956 ibid.) was a painter and caricaturist of German-American descent.

Lyonel Feininger's artistic career


Lyonel Feininger took drawing lessons at the Hamburg Gewerbeschule at the age of 16. A year later, in 1888, he was accepted at the Royal Academy of Arts in Berlin, where he attended Ernst Hancke's painting class. From 1891 he continued his studies at the private art school of the painter Adolf Schlabitz.

Between 1892 and 1909 Feininger travelled extensively and spent time in Rome, Paris and London, among other places. At the same time, he published caricatures in various German, French and US newspapers and magazines. Based on his long time as a caricaturist, the artist developed a very distinctive painting style.

The Berlin Years of Lyonel Feininger


In 1901 the artist married Clara Fürst, with whom he had two daughters. Only four years later, after his acquaintance with Julia Berg, the marriage was divorced again. In 1906, Feininger and Berg had a son together. Two years later the couple married. The family settled in Berlin, where the artist joined the artists' group "Berliner Secession" in 1909. In 1911, several of Feininger's paintings were exhibited at the Salon des Artistes Indépendants ("Salon of Independent Artists") in Paris. There Feininger found his actual artistic form through his encounter with the works of the Cubists. Figurative elements were almost completely banished from his motif pool. From now on, the city dominated as a pictorial theme.

Feininger's first solo exhibition opened on 2 September 1917 at the gallery "Der Sturm" in Berlin, showing more than 100 paintings and other works.


Lyonel Feininger at the Bauhaus


In May 1919, Lyonel Feininger was one of the first masters to be appointed by Walter Gropius to the State Bauhaus in Weimar, where he was master printer from 1919 to 1925. With the well-known title page of the Bauhaus manifesto, the woodcut "Cathedral of Socialism", Feininger succeeded in symbolising the founding idea of the Bauhaus, the unity of craft and art.
Especially during and after the First World War, Feininger regarded the church tower as a symbol of hope and peace. The artist negated perspective space in his works and assembled motifs from cubic, nested and prismatically broken forms that lend the works an inner monumentality. By appropriating Delaunay's theory of colour, his motifs are always characterised by a light transparency flooded with light. In the 1920s, depictions of coastal landscapes antipodally took their place alongside urban landscapes.
Following the holistic aspirations of the Bauhaus, Feininger also devoted himself to music in 1921 and composed his first fugue. In 1924 he joined forces with Alexej von Jawlensky, Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky to form the exhibition group "The Blue Four". Klee, Feininger and Kandinsky taught at the Bauhaus, while Jawlensky worked as a freelance artist.
Lyonel Feininger joined the Bauhaus when it moved to Dessau and remained a master at the Bauhaus without teaching duties. One year after the Bauhaus closed in 1933, the artist returned to Berlin with his family.

The period of Lyonel Feininger's emigration


During the National Socialist era, Feininger's works were officially considered "degenerate art".
As early as 1936, Feininger visited New York and taught at Mills College in Oakland during the summer months. The following year he moved to the USA for good. He continued to teach there at Mills College and at Black Mountain College in North Carolina.
Several major exhibitions were organised in his honour in the USA, such as the retrospective at the New York Museum of Modern Art in 1944. In 1947, he was elected president of the Federation of American Painters and Sculptors.
Feininger died at the age of 84 in New York City, the city of his birth and eventually his adopted home.

Sources:

    - Elger, Dietmar (1991) EXPRESSIONISM. Cologne: Taschen Verlag GmbH
    - bauhaus kooperation: https://www.bauhauskooperation.de/wissen/das-bauhaus/koepfe/meister-und-lehrende/lyonel-feininger/ (Visited on 08.11.2020)

Stadtkirche Weimar I, 1929, Charcoal drawing on laid paper, 37,5 × 29 cm

Two sailing ships and iceberg, 1942, Gouache, watercolor and pen and ink on paper, 55,1 × 77,3 cm

Häusergruppe mit zwei Personen, 1933, Watercolor and pen and ink on paper, 24 × 31,2 cm

1871
Born in New York on 17 July.
1887
Attends the School of Arts and Crafts in Hamburg.
1888
Studied at the Royal Academy of Arts, Berlin.
1891
Studies at the private art school of the painter Adolf Schlabitz.
1901
Marriage to Clara Fürst. Birth of the first daughter Lore.
1902
Birth of the second daughter Marianne.
1905
Acquaintance with Julia Berg. Separation from his wife Clara.
1906
Moves into a studio in Weimar. Birth of son Andreas.
1908
Marriage to Julia Berg.
1909
Birth of the second son Laurence. Member of the "Berliner Secession".
1910
Birth of the third son Lux.
1911
Exhibits paintings at the "Salon des Indépendants", Paris.
1917
Interned after the USA entered the war.
1919
Professor at the Bauhaus, Weimar.
1921
He composes his first fugue.
1924
Founding member of the artist group "Blaue Vier", Weimar.
1926
Moves to Dessau. Feininger is a master at the Bauhaus without teaching obligations.
1932
The Bauhaus in Dessau is closed.
1933
Return to Berlin.
1936
Feininger holds a summer course at Mills College, Oakland.
1937
Return to the USA.
1943
Worcester Museum of Art - Prize.
1944
Major retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art.
1945
Feininger holds a summer course at Black Mountain College, North Carolina.
1947
He is elected President of the Federation of American Painters and Sculptors.
1956
He dies in New York on 13 January.