Lyonel Feininger

(b New York, 17 July 1871; d New York, 13 Jan 1956). Painter, printmaker and illustrator. Although he was sent to Germany as a teenager to study music, a drawing class at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Hamburg instead sparked an interest in art, which led to further training at the Akademie der K?nste in Berlin and in 1892-3 at the Acad?mie Colarossi in Paris. Returning to Berlin, he was a prominent illustrator by the mid-1890s for Ulk, Lustige Bl?tter and other leading German satirical magazines. His work also appeared in the USA, first for Harper's Round Table in 1894 and 1895 and in 1906-7 in the comic strips 'The Kin-der-Kids' and 'Wee Willie Winkie's World' for the Chicago Sunday Tribune, by which time he was again in Paris. There he was also in contact with Wilhelm Uhde, Jules Pascin and other members of the circle that met at the Caf? du D?me and produced a series of drawings for Le T?moin. While often alluding to serious contemporary issues, the style of his illustrations and drawings was fanciful rather than grotesque.

Part of the Feininger family

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The American painter and illustrator Lyonel Feininger (1871-1956) was one of the leading artists of the German Bauhaus.

Lyonel Feininger was born on July 17, 1871, in New York, the son of German musicians who had emigrated to the United States. In 1887 he went to Germany to study music, but he decided on the visual arts and attended the Hamburg School of Arts and Crafts and the Berlin Academy of Arts until 1891. He then went to Paris and studied at the Académie Colarossi until 1893.

Feininger showed an outspoken talent for caricature and became a contributor to the German humorous periodicals Ulk and Fliegende Blätter in Berlin, where he lived from 1894 to 1906. He then returned to Paris and produced drawings for the Chicago Sunday Tribune and the Parisian paper Le Témoin. His caricatures, which were capricious and fantastic, had much in common with Paul Klee's early drawings.

In 1908 Feininger returned to Berlin. On a visit to Paris in 1911 he met Robert Delaunay and became acquainted with cubist painting. It was the constructive-ordering principle dominating cubism that attracted Feininger most and appealed to his personal taste. Cubism and the Section d'Or group had a decisive influence on the formation of his painting. His first cubist paintings date from 1912. His own style was representational and two-dimensional, rendered in a prismatic protocubist manner. Light played a predominant role in his work; the rays of light were used in both the structure and the coloring of the composition.

In 1913 the artists of the Blaue Reiter group invited Feininger to exhibit with them in Berlin's First German Autumn Salon. His friendships with Wassily Kandinsky, Klee, and Alexei von Jawlensky began at this time, and later, in 1924, the four artists founded the Blaue Vier group.

Feininger's personal style was established about 1915. Abstract elements, however, had appeared in his earlier compositions. In 1919 the architect Walter Gropius, the founder of the Bauhaus in Weimar, asked Feininger to teach painting there. Architecture, which was one of Feininger's main themes, came even more into the foreground during his Bauhaus period. The other main theme in the artist's oeuvre (both oils and watercolors) was seascapes with high skies and sailing boats. When the Bauhaus moved to Dessau in 1925, Feininger left as a teacher but remained in contact with this institution until it closed in 1933. He exhibited with the Blaue Vier group from 1933 to 1936.

In 1937 Feininger returned to New York, where he died on Jan. 11, 1956. His late pictures have a pristine classical character. His art, with its emphasis on proportion, transparency, and serenity, is well balanced and harmonious.

Further Reading

The most comprehensive book on Feininger is Hans Hess, Lyonel Feininger (1961), which contains a works list and a good bibliography. Ernst Scheyer, Lyonel Feininger: Caricature and Fantasy (1964), is a detailed study of Feininger as a cartoonist. The Museum of Modern Art's Lyonel Feininger, edited by Dorothy C. Miller (1944), includes essays on Feininger and excerpts from his letters.

Additional Sources

Feininger, Lyonel, Lyonel Feininge, New York, Praeger 1974.

For more information on Lyonel Charles Adrian Feininger, visit Britannica.com.

Feininger, Lyonel (fī'nĭngər) , 1871–1956, American painter and illustrator, b. New York City. Feininger studied painting in Berlin, Hamburg, and Paris. He was an illustrator and caricaturist for several periodicals in Paris and in Germany and had a weekly comic page (1906–7) in the Chicago Tribune before he turned to easel painting in 1907. He exhibited with the Blaue Reiter group and taught at the Bauhaus in Germany (1919–32). His canvases appeared in the so-called degenerate art exhibition of 1933. He returned permanently to the United States in 1937, taught at Mills College, and exhibited extensively. Feininger was fascinated by sailboats and skyscrapers, themes that appear in many of his oils and watercolors. He developed a delicate geometric style with interlocking translucent planes, suggestive of both light rays and architectural forms. Feininger is represented in New York City in the Metropolitan Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Whitney Museum, and his works are also included in other leading collections.

Bibliography

See his reminiscences, ed. by J. L. Ness (1974); definitive catalog of his graphic work by L. E. Prasse (1972); biographies by H. Hess (1961) and E. Schuyer (1964); study by T. L. Feininger (1965); The Comic Strip Art of Lyonel Feininger (1994), ed. by B. Blackbeard.

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