New Web objects Abstract

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."