Feininger, Lyonel: translation
(1871-1956)
painter and illustrator; although he was deemed an Expressionist,* his clarity and precision separated him from contemporaries. Born in New York to two musicians, he began violin lessons with his father in 1880 and traveled to Germany in 1887 to study music. But within a month of his arrival he chose to become a painter. During 1887-1891 he attended both the Hamburg Kunstgewerbeschule and Berlin's* Kunstakade-mie. After two years of Parisian studies he spent thirteen years as a caricaturist and illustrator for the Fliegende Blatter and Ulk, a satirical enclosure in the Berliner Tageblatt.Living again in Paris during 1906-1907, he drew comic strips for Le Témoin and the Chicago Tribune.
During 1907-1909 Feininger turned from drawing to painting, relocated to Berlin, and joined the Berliner Sezession. In the September 1913 exhibition Ersten Deutschen Herbstsalon (First German Autumn Salon), he showed his work with members of the Blaue Reiter. Already influenced by Futurism and Cubism, he absorbed Expressionist elements during the war years. When the government detained him in 1917 as an enemy alien (he had retained American citizenship), he was released through the intervention of Herwarth Walden,* who then sponsored his first solo exhibition at the Galerie der Sturm. He joined the Novembergruppe* in 1918 and met Walter Gropius,* who invited him to join the Bauhaus.* Responsible for the school s graphics workshop, he formed close friendships with colleagues Paul Klee* and Wassily Kandinsky,* leading in 1925 to establishment of the exhibition group Blaue Vier (the fourth was Alexej von Jawlensky). In 1931, after many of his works had been purchased by German museums, the Berlin National Gallery honored him with a solo show.
As an illustrator Feininger merged scribbled and linear line. The humor of his early drawings, with their oversized shapes, was also evident in his early paintings. Under the influence of a 1911 sojourn in Paris, he became an exponent of Cubism, in which he showed special interest in landscape. By 1918 his sur-faces had become more transparent and his colors lighter. Although he still painted landscapes in the 1920s, his works were decreasingly realistic. From about 1915 he painted chiefly in small Thuringian communities, later turning to representations of the Baltic s deep horizons, sailboats, and ships. Through a refined use of color and removal of unnecessary detail, his work acquired a pure and magical intensity.
During 1924-1935 Feininger spent almost every summer in Pomerania. When the Bauhaus s Dessau phase ended in 1932, he stopped teaching. Despite un-employment and being forbidden to exhibit, he remained in Germany until mid-1937. A visit to New York in May 1936, his first since 1887, led to permanent relocation the next year. The Nazis confiscated 378 of his pieces from public collections throughout Germany—a testimonial to his popularity. Eight paint-ings, 1 watercolor, and 13 woodcuts were included in the 1937 exhibition En-tartete Kunst (Degenerate Art).
REFERENCES:Barron, "Degenerate Art"; NDB, vol. 5; Selz, German Expressionist Painting.