Background
Lyonel Feininger was born on July 17, 1871 in New York City, New York, United States. He was a son of Karl Feininger, a violinist and composer, and Elizabeth Feininger, a singer.
Pariser Platz 4, 10117 Berlin, Germany
Academy of Arts in Berlin
Geschwister-Scholl-Straße 8, 99423 Weimar, Germany
Bauhaus art school
633 W 155th St, New York City, NY 10032, United States
American Academy of Arts and Letters
Lyonel Feininger was born on July 17, 1871 in New York City, New York, United States. He was a son of Karl Feininger, a violinist and composer, and Elizabeth Feininger, a singer.
In 1887, Lyonel left for Germany to study music but, instead, he decided to become an artist and enrolled at Hamburg School of Arts and Crafts. Also, he attended Academy of Arts in Berlin.
In 1892, Feininger entered Colarossi Academy, where he spent a year, and then, he returned to Berlin.
In 1894, Lyonel Feininger started his career as a cartoonist, working for several German, French and American magazines. Some time later, he 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, being listed as an enemy alien by the Germans during World War I.
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. Lyonel's 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 friendship with Wassily Kandinsky, Klee and Alexei von Jawlensky began at this time, and later, in 1924, the four artists founded the Blaue Vier group.
In 1919, the architect Walter Gropius, who was the founder of the Bauhaus, a German art school 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 seascape 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.
During the period from 1933 to 1936, the painter exhibited with the Blaue Vier group. In 1937, Feininger returned to New York, where he lived and worked till the end of his life. His late pictures have a pristine classical character. His art, with its emphasis on proportion, transparency and serenity, is well balanced and harmonious.
Feininger also had intermittent activity as a pianist and composer.
Cathedral of Socialism
Town Gate, Ribnitz (Das Tor, Ribnitz)
Hanseatic Ships (Hansaschiffe)
The Disparagers
Steam Train
Werther I
Carnival in Arcueil
Trumpeter (Trompeter)
On the Bridge (Ober-Weimar)
The Dome in Halle
Church of the Minorities II
Hopfgarten
The Kin-der-Kids
Carnival in Arcueil
Bathers on the Beach I 1912
Gelmeroda III
Self-Portrait
In a Village Near Paris (Street in Paris, Pink Sky)
Harbor Mole
Regatta
Woodblock for Fishing Boats (Fischerboote)
Gaberndorf II
The Cathedral
Gelmeroda IX
Gelmeroda V
Barfuesserkirche I
Volcano (Vulkan)
Rainy Day on the Beach (Regentag am Strande)
The Village of Legefeld I (Dorf Legefeld I)
Mystic River
Landungssteg
St. Mary's Church with the Arrow
Jimjam
The Kin-der-Kids, Japansky Surprises the Governor—General who condemns him to death
Torturm II
Gelmeroda
Church of the Minorites II
Stiller Tag am Meer III
Market Church in Halle
The Green Bridge II
City on the Mountain (Stadt auf dem Berge)
Mid-Ocean
Gelmeroda VIII
Still Life with Can
The White Man
Im Dorfe
Woodblock for The Harbor (Hafen)
The Rainbow (Der Regenbogen)
People on the Jetty (Leute auf See-Steg)
Cyclists
The Yacht Race (Wettsegeln)
Ships
Jesuiten III (Jesuits III)
Storm Brewing
The High Shore
Uprising
Desolated Village (Verfallenes Dorf)
Gelmeroda XIII
Yellow Street II
Marine from The First Portfolio (Die erste Mappe)
Lady in Mauve
The Green Bridge II
Railroad Viaduct (Die Eisenbahnbrücke)
Euphoric Victory (Siegesrausch)
Oberweimar
Quotations:
"There is no foreground or background, only a continuity of interlacing relationships."
"Each individual work serves as an expression of our most personal state of mind at that particular moment and of the inescapable, imperative need for release by means of an appropriate act of creation: in the rhythm, form, colour and mood of a picture."
"The most beautiful landscape cannot hold my fascinated attention as much as nature by the seaside and all that is connected with water."
"Where I used to strive for movement and restlessness I now attempt to sense and express the complete total calm of objects and the surrounding air."
Lyonel Feininger was a member of Die Brücke, the Novembergruppe, Gruppe 1919, the Blaue Reiter circle and Die Blaue Vier (The Blue Four).
Lyonel married Clara Fürst in 1901. Their marriage produced two daughters. In 1905, the couple divorced and three years later, Feininger married Julia Berg. The couple gave birth to three boys, two of which later became well-known people. T. Lux Feininger was a painter and Andreas Bernhard Lyonel Feininger was a photographer.