Lyonel Feininger

About the artist

Lyonel Feininger was born Leónell Charles Feininger in New York City (USA) on 17 July 1871. His parents were musicians; his father, Karl (Charles), from Baden, was a violinist and composer, while his mother, Elizabeth Cecilia, née Lutz, was a pianist and singer. In 1887, the 16-year-old Feininger travelled to Germany, where his parents wanted him to perfect his violin playing in Leipzig. Initially living with a relative in Hamburg, Feininger took drawing lessons at the Hamburg Trade School. He was determined to become a painter: "(...) life would not be worth living if I could not follow this profession (...)" he wrote from Hamburg on 27 February 1888. In the same year, Feininger moved to Berlin, where he began studying painting at the Academy of Fine Arts (until 1890). In Berlin, he began drawing caricatures and working as a cartoonist for newspapers and magazines. A stay of several months (1890) in Liège, where Feininger attended the Collège St Servais at his father's request, awakened his interest in ancient architecture. After his return to Berlin (1891), Feininger first studied at Adolf Schlabitz's art school and then again at the Academy of Fine Arts. After studying in Paris (1892/93) and attending the Academie Colarossi, Feininger returned to Berlin. His acquaintance (1905) with Julia Berg, née Lilienfeld, whom he married in 1908, led to his first stay in Weimar (1906). Feininger travelled to Paris again in 1906. Here he produced his first paintings in 1907. After his return to Berlin, Feininger settled in Berlin-Zehlendorf (until 1919). In 1911, he first encountered the works of French Cubism in Paris, which had a lasting influence on his artistic work. Due to his love of Weimar and its surroundings, Feininger rented an additional studio here in 1913. The first paintings of the village church of Gelmeroda are created. In the same year, Feininger was invited to take part in the First German Autumn Salon, organised by Franz Marc, August Macke and Herwarth Walden, the founder of the Berlin gallery "Der Sturm". In 1917, Feininger has his first solo exhibition at the Sturm Gallery. In 1918, Feininger began to create his first woodcuts, which, alongside painting and watercolour, became an important means of artistic expression for the artist, and in 1919 he was appointed as the first master at the Staatliches Bauhaus in Weimar, founded by Walter Gropius. His woodcut of a cathedral with three stars (1919) serves as the title of the programme of the Staatliches Bauhaus. In 1921, Feininger became master of form at the Bauhaus print shop and in this function was responsible for the publication of the Bauhaus Weimar print editions (e.g. Neue europäische Graphik - Erste Mappe, Meister des Staatlichen Bauhauses Weimar, 1921). Together with Wassily Kandinsky, Alexej Jawlensky and Paul Klee, he founded the group "The Blue Four" in 1924, which was intended as an exhibition group. In the USA, the four painters are represented as a group by Emmy Galka Scheyer. In 1926, Feininger moved with the State Bauhaus to Dessau, where he was released from his teaching duties by Gropius, but remained as artist-in-residence until 1932. During these years, he spent time in Halle (Saale), which led to a series of 11 paintings created between 1929 and 1931 (e.g. "Marienkirche von Westen", Halle, 1930, oil/painting, Halle, Kunstmuseum Moritzburg). Feininger received his first museum retrospective in 1931 (Essen, Museum Folkwang). After the closure of the Bauhaus in 1932 by the National Socialist municipal council in Dessau, Feininger initially stays in Deep (Pomerania), then with friends in Berlin. In 1934, he and his wife Julia moved into a flat in Berlin-Siemensstadt. In 1936, Feininger accepted an invitation from art historian Alfred Neumeyer to give a lecture at Mills College in Oakland, California. Feininger returned to the USA for a few months for the first time in decades. Although his works are defamed by the National Socialists in Germany as "degenerate", Feininger returns to Germany once again. In 1937, over 550 of his works were confiscated from German public collections. Feininger decides to leave Germany and accepts a second invitation to Mills College in Oakland in 1937, where he holds a summer course. Feininger and his wife Julia finally settled in New York City (235 East 22nd Street). The numerous nature notes he made at the Baltic Sea and around Weimar served him to process the memories of his stays there into watercolours and paintings. In 1942, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, purchased Feininger's painting "Gelmeroda XIII" (1936, oil on canvas). In 1944 Feininger was given a major retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and in 1951 at the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland. Feininger dies on 13 January 1956.