Lyonel Feininger
Lyonel Feininger | |
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Novembergruppe | |
Elected | American Academy of Arts and Letters (1955) |
Lyonel Charles Adrian Feininger (July 17, 1871 – January 13, 1956) was a
Life and work
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![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/1/15/Lyonel_Feininger%27s_painting_%27Gaberndorf_II%27%2C_1924.jpg/220px-Lyonel_Feininger%27s_painting_%27Gaberndorf_II%27%2C_1924.jpg)
Lyonel Feininger was born to German-American violinist and composer
In 1900, he met Clara Fürst, 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 sons.
The artist was represented with drawings at the exhibitions of the annual Berlin Secession in the years 1901 through 1903.
Feininger's career as cartoonist began 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,
Feininger started working as a fine artist at the age of 36. He was a member of the
From 1909 until 1918, Feininger spent summer vacations on the island of Usedom 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.[8][9][10]
He designed the cover for the Bauhaus 1919 manifesto: an expressionist woodcut 'cathedral'. He taught at the Bauhaus for several years. Among the students who attended his workshops were Ludwig Hirschfeld Mack (German/Australian (1893–1965), Hans Friedrich Grohs (German 1892 – 1981), and Margarete Koehler-Bittkow (German/American, 1898–1964).
When the
In addition to drawing, painting, woodcutting, and printmaking, Feininger created art with painted toy figures being photographed in front of drawn backgrounds.[12]
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 photographer László Moholy-Nagy, 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 and Alfred H. Barr Jr.[7]
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."[13]
His sons, Andreas Feininger and T. Lux Feininger, 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.[14]
Major retrospectives
A major retrospective exhibition of Lyonel Feininger's work was put on in 2011–2012: it opened initially at the
An important retrospective exhibition of Lyonel Feininger's photographic work took place Germany and the USA in 2011–2012, from Berlin (Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen) to Cambridge, Massachusetts (Busch-Reisinger Museum), through Munich (Pinakothek der Moderne) and Los Angeles (J. Paul Getty Museum).[17]
In popular culture
In Robert M. Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974) the narrator finds a print of Feininger's "Church of the Minorites" hanging in the office that used to be his in his earlier life as Phaedrus. He writes that his friend "had frowned because it was a print and prints are of art and not art themselves [...] But the print had an appeal to him that was irrelevant to the art in that the subject, a kind of Gothic cathedral, created from semiabstract lines and planes and colors and shades, seemed to reflect his mind's vision of the Church of Reason and that was why he'd put it here." Finding the print jolts loose "an avalanche of memory" of the very place his madness started.[18]
Art market
At a 2001 Christie's auction in London, Feininger's painting The Green Bridge (1909) was sold for £2.42 million.[19]
At a 2007 Sotheby's auction in New York, Feininger's oil painting "Jesuits III" (1915) sold for $23,280,000.[20]
At a 2017 Sotheby's auction in New York, Feininger's oil painting Fin de séance (1910) sold for $5,637,500.[21]
Selected works
- 1907, Der weiße Mann, (Collection Museo Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid)
- 1910, Straße im Dämmern, (Sprengel Museum, Hannover)
- 1913, Gelmeroda I, (Private collection, New York)
- 1913, Leuchtbake, (Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany)
- 1916, Grüne Brücke II (Green Bridge II), (North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh)
- 1918, Teltow II, (Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin)
- 1918, "Yellow Streets II", (Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montréal, Montréal)
- 1920, Ostsee-Segelboote II, (Private collection, Wichita, KS)
- 1922, Church of Heiligenhafen, (Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, NC)
- 1925, Barfüßerkirche in Erfurt I, (Staatsgalerie Stuttgart)
- 1926, Barfüßerkirche II (Church of the Minorites 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, New York)
- 1940, The River, (Worcester Art Museum, MA)
See also
References
- ^ Lyonel Charles Adrian Feininger, Museum Lyonel Feininger - Welterbestadt Quedlinburg, retrieved 25 April 2024
- ^ a b c d e "Alfred Vance Churchill papers regarding Lyonel Feininger, 1888–1944". Archive of American Art Finding Aids. Smithsonian Institution. Retrieved 2011-07-29.
- ^ artnet: "Lyonel Feininger (American/German, 1871–1956)": "Lyonel Feininger (Léonell Charles Feininger) is born in New York City on July 17th. He was the first child of the violinist Karl Feininger from Durlach in Baden (South West Germany) and the American singer Elizabeth Cecilia Feininger, born Lutz, who was also of German descent."
- ISBN 0714832502
- ^ The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica: "Lyonel Feininger. American artist." Last Updated: 9 January 2024. Retrieved 2 February 2024.
- ^ a b "Lyonel Feininger". Cartoons. Ohio State University. Retrieved 2011-07-29.
- ^ a b c Muir, Laura and Nathan Timpano. Lyonel Feininger: Photographs 1928–1939.
- ^ "Lyonel-Feininger-Tour auf Usedom". www.papileo.de.
- ^ Backert, Elke (16 December 2014). "The island of Usedom: Where the last German emperor was staying for summer". My Islands. Retrieved 8 June 2022.
- ^ "Radtour: Auf Lyonel Feiningers Spuren über Usedom" [Bike tour: In the tracks of Lyonel Feininger via Usedom]. NDR (in German). 30 July 2020. Retrieved 8 June 2022.
- ^ "Deceased Members". American Academy of Arts and Letters. Archived from the original on July 26, 2011. Retrieved July 30, 2011.
- LCCN 65-25280.
- ^ "Lyonel Feininger". American Symphony Orchestra. October 21, 2011. Retrieved 2018-02-05.
- ^ Grimes, William (July 13, 2011). "T. Lux Feininger, Photographer and Painter, Dies at 101". The New York Times.
- ^ "Past Exhibitions". Montreal, Quebec: The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. Retrieved 2019-02-05.
- ^ "Lyonel Feininger at the Edge of the World". Whitney Museum of American Art. October 6, 2011. Retrieved 2018-02-05.
- ISBN 978-3775727891.
- OCLC 600362397– via Internet Archive.
- ^ Souren Melikian (June 30, 2001), Market Goes Its Own Way With Record Prices International Herald Tribune
- ^ "Lot number 22, Lyonel Feininger 1871 – 1956 JESUITEN III (JESUITS III)". LotSearch. 2017-06-12. Retrieved 2019-06-22.
- ^ Sotheby's New York, 16 May 2017
Further reading
- Blackbeard, Bill (1994). The Comic Strip Art of Lyonel Feininger. Kitchen Sink Press. ISBN 0-87816-293-3.
- Feininger, T. Lux (1965). Lyonel Feininger: City at the Edge of the World. Frederick A. Praeger. LCCN 65-25280.
- Haskell, Barbara. Lyonel Feininger: At The Edge of the World. Exhibition Catalogue. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 2011
- Ness, June (1974). Lyonel Feininger. Frederick A. Praeger. LCCN 72-888673.
- Hartley, Marsden (1944). Lyonel Feininger. Museum of Modern Art, New York.
- Muir, Laura and Nathan Timpano. Lyonel Feininger: Photographs, 1928–1939. Cambridge: Harvard Art Museums and Hatje Cantz, 2011
- Nisbet, Peter. Lyonel Feininger: Drawings and Watercolors. Cambridge: Harvard Art Museums and Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2011
External links
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- Works by or about Lyonel Feininger at Internet Archive
- Feininger retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York Lyonel Feininger: At the Edge of the World
- Lyonel Feininger Project
- Moeller Fine Art – Lyonel Feininger Moeller Fine Art, New York + Berlin, world expert on Lyonel Feininger
- The Ohio State University Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum: Lyonel Feininger digital exhibit
- Lyonel Feininger at Don Markstein's Toonopedia. Archived from the original on April 15, 2015.
- Available Works and Biography Galerie Ludorff, Düsseldorf, Germany
- Biography
- "Feininger-Galerie – Lyonel Feininger". Quedlinburg, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany: Feininger-Galerie. Archived from the original on 25 April 2012. Retrieved 5 November 2011.