Lyonel Feininger:From the town at the end of the world to the Baltic Sea

The exhibition, which includes around 70 works, provides an overview of the painter and graphic artist’s entire artistic work. His caricatures, with which he made a name for himself in Germany around 1900 and which form the basis for his grotesque figure compositions created before the First World War, are almost unknown. With the discovery of the Thuringian village churches and, at the latest, from 1922 onwards with the experience of the Baltic Sea, Feininger’s imagery changed, condensing into spatially fragmented and atmospherically charged, complex compositions. When he returned to his home town in 1937, he had to leave his beloved motifs behind in Germany. Branded as a “degenerate” artist by the National Socialists, a late work was created in New York until his death in 1956, which, based on memory, repeatedly took up compositions from his time in Germany.

Many of the exhibited works, including paintings and works on paper, but also three-dimensional objects, are provided by private lenders and are very rarely shown to the public.

The exhibition is curated by the world-renowned Feininger expert Dr. Ulrich Luckhardt from Hamburg.