Lyonel Feininger

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

(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

See the Abbreviations for further details.

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.

Lyonel Feininger
Feininger's painting 'Gaberndorf II', 1924
Born	July 17, 1871(1871-07-17)
Died	January 13, 1956 (aged 84)
Nationality	American
Field	Painting, Cartoonist

Lyonel Charles Feininger (July 17, 1871 – January 13, 1956) was a German-American painter and caricaturist.

Contents 1 Life and work 2 Selected works 3 See also 4 References 5 External links

Life and work

Lyonel Feininger was born to parents of German American descent and grew up in New York City. He moved to Berlin in 1887 to study at the Königliche Akademie Berlin under Ernst Hancke, art schools in Berlin with Karl Schlabitz, and in Paris with sculptor Filippo Colarossi. He started working as a caricaturist for several magazines including Harper's Round Table, Harper's Young People, Humoristische Blätter, Lustige Blätter, Das Narrenschiff, Berliner Tageblatt and Ulk.

Feininger married Clara Fürst, daughter of the painter Gustav Fürst, and they had two daughters. He also had several children with Julia Berg whom he later married.

The artist is represented with drawings at the exhibitions of the annual Berlin Secession in the years 1901 through 1903.

Feininger only started working as an artist at the age of 36, after having worked as a commercial caricaturist for twenty years for various newspapers and magazines in both the USA and Germany; he was a member of the Berliner Sezession in 1909, was associated with expressionist group Die Brücke, the Novembergruppe, Gruppe 1919, the Blaue Reiter circle and The Blue Four. Famously, he designed the cover for the Bauhaus 1919 manifesto: an expressionist woodcut 'cathedral'. He also 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 NSDAP came to power in 1933, the situation became unbearable for Feininger and his wife, who was partly Jewish. They moved to America after his work was exhibited in the 'degenerate art' (Entartete Kunst) in 1936, but before the 1937 exhibition in Munich.

Feininger was one of the very few fine artists also to draw comic strips as a cartoonist. His short-lived strips, The Kin-der-Kids and Wee Willie Winkie's World were noted for their fey humor and graphic experimentation.

Feininger also had intermittent activity as a pianist and composer, with several piano compositions and fugues for organ extant.

His son, Andreas Feininger, became famous as a photographer of New York City.

Lyonel Feininger's painting Jesuiten III (Jesuits III), 1915

Stamp, Germany 2002

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)
• 1918, Teltow II, (Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin)
• 1918, "Yellow Streets II", (Musée de Beaux-Arts de Montréal, Montréal)
• 1925, Barfüßerkirche in Erfurt I, (Staatsgalerie Stuttgart)
• 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 City)

See also

• Cubism
• Expressionism

References

• Feininger's biography at artnet

External links

• Lyonel Feininger Project
• Lyonel Feininger Digital Album The Ohio State University Cartoon Research Library
• Toonopedia: Lyonel Feininger
• Lyonel Feininger's Photo & Gravesite
• Available Works and Biography Galerie Ludorff, Duesseldorf, Germany
• Lyonel Feininger Virtual Gallery
• Lyonel Feininger papers at the Smithsonian Archives of American Art

v • d • e Der Blaue Reiter Leaders Wassily Kandinsky · Franz Marc Artists Albert Bloch · David Burliuk · Heinrich Campendonk · Lyonel Feininger · Natalia Goncharova · Alexej von Jawlensky · Paul Klee · August Macke · Gabriele Münter · Arnold Schoenberg See also Die Brücke · Expressionism

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