Dated Web objects 1880-1919

Lyonel Feininger

Date: 1912

Credit Line: Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection

Object number: 1995.2

Text Entries: Prasse, Leona E. <i>Lyonel Feininger: A Definitive Catalogue of His Graphic Work: Etchings, Lithographs, Woodcuts</i>. Cleveland, Ohio: Cleveland Museum of Art; Berlin: Gebr. Mann, 1972. No. E-52, pp. 84–85.<br><br> <i>The Gloria and Donald B. Marron Collection of American Prints</i>. (exh. cat., Santa Barbara Museum of Art). Santa Barbara, California: Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 1981. No. 74, pp. 110–12.<br><br> Jacobowitz, Ellen S. and George H. Marcus. <i>American Graphics, 1869–1949: Selected from the Collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art</i>. (exh. cat., Philadelphia Museum of Art). Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1982. No. 60, pp. 63–64.<br><br> Griffiths, Carey, Frances and Antony. <i>The Print in Germany 1880–1933, The Age of Expressionism</i>. London: British Museum Publications Limited, 1984. Cat. 194, p. 201.<br><br> Heller, Reinhold. <i>Lyonel Feininger: Awareness, Recollection, and Nostalgia</i>. (exh. cat., David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art). Chicago, Illinois: David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art, The University of Chicago, 1992. Text p. 11; fig. 2, p. 8 (Granvil and Marcia Specks Collection).<br><br> Brownlee, Peter John. <i>Manifest Destiny / Manifest Responsibility: Environmentalism and the Art of the American Landscape</i>. (exh. cat., Loyola University Museum of Art, Chicago, Illinois). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for American Art and Loyola University Museum of Art, 2008. Text p. 35 (checklist).

Lyonel Feininger

Date: 1917

Credit Line: Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection

Object number: 1988.27

Text Entries: When Lyonel Feininger moved to Germany with his parents in 1887, it was to study the violin. Once in Leipzig, however, Feininger decided that he would rather study art, and with his parents support enrolled in the School of Arts and Crafts in Hamburg. He later continued his art education in Berlin, Belgium, and Paris. In 1913, Feininger exhibited with the artists of the German expressionist Blue Rider group in Berlin and six years later began teaching at the revolutionary German art and architecture school, the Bauhaus, at the request of architect Walter Gropius. In 1937, after fifty years of living abroad, Feininger returned to the United States. Feininger was first known for his humorous cartoons and caricatures, often printed in French and German newspapers. His reputation became international when he illustrated the cartoons "The Kin-der-Kids," and "Wee Willie Winkie's World" for the Chicago Tribune. At the age of thirty-five Feininger turned to painting. Feeling that specific work should reflect the artist's inner spiritual state, he looked to rhythm, form, color, and mood for expression. Denstedt reflects Feininger's beliefs: its abstraction requires probing beyond the recognizable. A depiction of a village-often thought to be in the German Province of Thuringia, where Feininger and his wife sometimes lived-the painting offers jumbled lines, schismatic planes and acidic colors. Completed during the World War I, Denstedt could easily represent the artist's inner state of turmoil, for as Feininger explained, "The frightful world events weigh upon us and leave their gloomy traces upon my work."