Lyonel Feininger

1871–1956

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Lyonel Feininger, Gelmeroda, VIII, 1921 53.38

Lyonel Feininger, Gelmeroda, VIII, 1921. Oil on canvas, 39 1/4 × 31 1/4 in. (99.7 × 79.4 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase 53.38

Lyonel Feininger was an American artist but spent most of his life in Germany. Just as he balanced two national identities, he also moved between playful, figurative compositions and geometric abstraction. He began his career as an illustrator, creating caricatures and comic strips for German and American newspapers and magazines, but at the age of thirty-six, he quit his job to devote himself full-time to being an artist. In his early paintings, Feininger drew on his illustration skills to depict the energy and activity of street life—including carnivals, games, and cyclists—with bright colors and bold outlines. In his later work, he used faceted, geometric forms and transparent planes of color to express his vision of the modern world in a unique and spiritual way.

Inspiration

Feininger was inspired by music. He once said: “Music is the language of my innermost self which stirs me like no other form of expression.” He played and composed music. In the early 1920s, he composed pieces of music called fugues, and these compositions influenced his painting.

“The most beautiful landscape cannot hold my fascinated attention as much as nature by the seaside and all that is connected with water.”

—Lyonel Feininger

Materials

Oil paint

Toys

In 1913, Feininger had a job designing wooden toy trains for a German company. He continued to make small, hand-painted toy sculptures for much of his life, gifting them first to his children, then to friends and their children. The toy figures, trains, buildings, and boats that he created were also among the subjects of his paintings and prints.

About the artist

Lyonel Feininger worked in a wide variety of art forms. He was a painter, printmaker, illustrator, comic-strip artist, photographer, and toy maker. Like many artists today, Feininger lived and worked in different countries throughout his life. Although he spent fifty years abroad, he was born in New York City and always thought of himself as an American.

When he was sixteen, Feininger went to Germany to study music, but he soon decided to apply to art school instead. While at art school, Feininger studied cartooning and caricature, and in 1894 he started out as an illustrator. He became well-known for his comic strips and produced more than two thousand illustrations, but by 1907 he abandoned illustration to focus on painting. Feininger often depicted street scenes, using expressive line and vivid color.

In 1911, after a visit to Paris, the birthplace of Cubism, he began to introduce the faceted forms of Cubism into his work. Like the Cubists, he was interested in the way the eye sees the structure of three-dimensional space, but rather than fragmenting figures and objects and making them abstract as the Cubist artists did, Feininger combined these shapes with the rhythms of nature and architecture, using geometry to portray the order and beauty of the world.

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Photography

Feininger was interested in light and atmosphere and he took photographs throughout his career. He photographed water, fog, and snow as well as the reflections in street puddles and reflections on buildings and windows at night. He used some of his photographs as inspiration for his paintings.