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Feininger was an artist, illustrator and a musician. And he was famous at least for the first two, and good at the last one, too.
Lyonel was born July 17, 1871 in New York City of parents of German decent. Both of his parents were talented musicians. He was raised there until 1887 and then moved to Berlin to study at its great Academy with Ernst Hancke and also at other art schools in Berlin, including with Karl Schlabitz. He also studied to be a sculptor in Paris with Filippo Colarossi.
He married Clara Furst, who was also an artist and daughter of the noted painter Gustav Furst. He had two children with his Clara, and then several more children with Julia Berg, who became his second wife later. His son Andrea Feininger became a famous photographer of New York City.
He did caricaturist art for many magazines including Harpers publications. He became known for his short-lived but admired comic strips at the Chicago Tribune titled “The Kin-der- Kids” and “Wee Willie Winkie” that I have heard of, maybe because I was born in Chicago and raised in the suburbs myself. He was among the first to place speech graphically in bubbles.
His drawings were shown in the Berlin Secession (these were breakaway and radical) shows of 1901 and 1903.
It was only at age 36, after working in illustration and cartoons for 20 years, that he turned to painting. He was influenced by both Cubism and Expressionism and is, in fact, placed among the great German Expressionists himself — hence my article title. He was associated with many very famous expressionist groups such as “Die Brucke,” “The Novembergruppe,” “The Blue Rieter” circle and “The Blue Four,” amongst others.
He is also considered one of the founding members of the famed Bauhaus School of Art and Architecture and did the woodblock cover of their first great manifesto with his great “Cathedral” artwork. In 1933, the Nazis closed the Bauhaus and labeled his work “degenerate,” and more than 400 of his works were confiscated. Some were placed in Nazi shows as “degenerate art.” No fun at the time — but now I would think it a badge of praise!
His first wife, who was of Jewish background, made it dangerous for the family to stay in Germany, and he moved in 1937, for the rest of his life to New York City. He always considered himself to be a German, though, and later traveled to Germany for his shows. After the second world war, his fine artwork achieved great acclaim both in the U.S. at the Museum Of Modern Art and other shows, as well as in Germany and abroad.
He also was an accomplished pianist and composer and is known for his compositions of organ fugues — which I am waiting for, it seems forever, from Amazon.com.
I simply love his work! Maybe part of that is that I feel like a German Expressionist out of my own time. Also, since I am a registered architect, I especially love his architectural art, which I consider, all in all, to the best such work in the 20th century. So I was very surprised to find a learned artist friend of mine who said he really disliked Feininger’s work, then another good artist I know agreed! What was up, I wondered?
I think it is because — especially online — his cartoons and illustrations are often mixed together with his fine art, and although very good, they have — to me at least — a completely different look from his most serious paintings. Also, some of his caricaturist stretched-out people with tiny heads sometimes seems to have made it into his more serious work. That is not true of the best of his architectural work, however. I do not know if he would want this work even characterized as architectural, but it seems to be the obvious aspect of the subject matter.
His early work was somewhat influenced by Art Nouveau. His later work is more Cubist, with crystalline planes of light. His most successful work was buildings, often cathedrals and churches and also sailing boats; small ones, which he also designed and built, were the most contemporary looking and worked the best, I think. There was also a middle period of little German villages and old locomotives that I also enjoy, but I don’t think are as good or as cutting-edge at least. So maybe my learned friends are concentrating on some of those other types and objects of his work.
YouTube has a beautiful showing of his work to classical music that I think you should all check out! I was very moved by it. Just look under “Lyonel Feininger.”
To return to his best work: Lines of light, as it were, continue often past the buildings and into dark skies. Or it looks as if the building are materializing and dematerializing out of different realities or worlds. Maybe the infinite other worlds contemporary physics is postulating? Or the Heavenly Hierarchies of the great Medieval theologians?
The colors in these architectural works are often more muted than in some of his other works, too, and some have seen a sense of modern man in alienation from modern society in them. Though I can see what some critics might mean by that interpretation, I see my favorite works quite the opposite, really, as works of mystic fusion. Almost like in a Chinese Taoist watercolor. The people are often shown in small scale, as often in Chinese landscapes, harmoniously with all of nature, though showing more architecture than the norm in Chinese art.
Some of his works I think he designed from scratch are highly modernized, and I even like some of the designs better than, say, some of the Bauhaus designs of architect Gropius. I think that Lyonel Feininger could have been a great architect himself. His series of works on the Gelmorada church are some of my favorites, and the Halle Cathedral ones also.
Many — not all — writers on Feininger have made strong distinctions between his illustrations and his art. And some may wonder why they make this distinction at all. Isn’t illustration art after all? I know that many great artists in our area are also trained in illustration, so it is a touchy subject. I know that at least once, I think I inadvertently hurt a great artist’s feelings by making the distinction at all between illustration and fine art. I think I need to devote a whole article to this problem sometime. But Toulouse- Lautrec and others crossed the divide, as does Brad Holland recently. I also know that during the period of Pollock’s reign, illustration was often mocked, but the great friend of Pollock, De Kooning, was very outspoken in defending illustration as art.
But to just give a quick thought on this: The name illustration means to illustrate something. I just think that illustration often — not always — illustrates commercial things, and that’s not bad, of course. But what stops the so-called illustrator from taking her own great skills and using them to illustrate great human thoughts and emotions and events? After all, many of the great Mediaeval and Renaissance artists were, in fact, hired to illustrate something about a great prince or something about the Christian religion. But even there they had to fight to transcend the more commonplace interpretation of illustration of their subjects. The Sistine Chapel comes to mind. So I would suggest that illustration is an art but maybe a somewhat different art than what we maybe incorrectly call fine art, unless one fights to transcend the more normal role of illustration.
Just a thought! My own business card says Artist/Illustrator.
Lyonel Feininger I don’t think bridged the gap between fine art and illustration very well. But he did both separately very, very well. He died a famous artist, I think at peace, still creating great art, in 1956 at the advanced age of 84.
Lyonel Feininger — you made it if any artist ever does! RIP.
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