Lyonel Feininger

The German-American painter, draftsman and graphic artist Lyonel Feininger was born on July 17, 1871 in New York City into a family of musicians; his German father was a concert violinist, his American mother a singer and pianist. In 1887 the family traveled to Germany, Lyonel Feininger began studying at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Hamburg, and from 1888 he studied at the Königliche Akademie der Künste in Berlin. In 1892/93 he is in Paris and attends the Académie Colarossi there. After returning to Berlin in 1893, Lyonel Feininger worked as a draftsman, freelance illustrator and caricaturist for various newspapers and magazines. In 1901 Lyonel Feininger married the pianist Clara Fürst, the couple had two daughters, Eleonore (later a photographer) and Marianne, but the couple separated when Feininger met the artist Julia Berg in 1905. With Julia Berg, Lyonel Feininger goes to Paris again in 1906 and attends drawing class at the Académie Colarossi; he also produces his first prints. In Paris in 1906 the son Andreas is born (later photographer). From 1907 Lyonel Feininger also produces his first oil paintings. In 1908 he marries Julia Berg and moves with her back to Berlin. Artist of German Expressionism and Bauhaus teacher of the first hour. In Berlin, Lyonel Feininger becomes a member of the Berlin Secession in 1909. In the same year the second son Laurence (later musicologist, priest) is born, in 1910 the third son Theodor Lukas (later as T. Lux Feininger photographer and painter). When Lyonel Feininger takes part in the Salon des Indépendants in Paris in 1911, he comes into intensive contact with the art of Cubism, he also meets the artists of the "Brücke" in Berlin in 1912 at the latest, and in 1913 Lyonel Feininger takes part with the artists' group "Der Blaue Reiter" in the First German Autumn Salon in Herwarth Walden's gallery "Der Sturm". In 1917 the Berlin gallery "Der Sturm" shows Lyonel Feininger's first solo exhibition. In 1918 Feininger became a member of the "Novembergruppe". Also in 1918, he made the acquaintance of Walter Gropius, who in 1919 appointed him as the first teacher at the newly founded Bauhaus in Weimar, where he remained until the political tribulations of the 1930s. From 1920 to 1925, Lyonel Feininger was the master of the printing workshop. In 1921, the first folder "Neue Europäische Graphik" (New European Graphics) of the "Masters of the State Bauhaus Weimar" is printed here, with which the masters Lyonel Feininger, Johannes Itten, Paul Klee, Georg Muche, Oskar Schlemmer and Lothar Schreyer present themselves to the public for the first time. Unmistakable works in soft color and crystalline form. In 1924 Lyonel Feininger is part of the exhibition community "The Blue Four" initiated by Emilie Galka Scheyer with Wassily Kandinsky, Alexej von Jawlensky and Paul Klee, and Galka Scheyer organizes the first exhibition in 1925 in New York. In 1931, to honor Lyonel Feininger's 60th birthday, a large-scale retrospective was shown at the Folkwang Museum in Essen and the National Gallery in Berlin, but with the National Socialists' seizure of power in Germany, Feininger's art was now also considered "degenerate". As one of the most important avant-garde artists and pioneers of modernism, he was expelled from Dessau. In 1936 he received a teaching position at Mills College in California, and in 1937 Lyonel Feininger and his wife emigrated to the USA. In 1944 the Museum of Modern Art in New York organized a retrospective. In 1945 Feininger became a lecturer at Black Mountain College in Ashville, North Carlina. Lyonel Feininger's works, unmistakable in their soft, muted color and crystalline form, are now among the most popular and sought-after works of classical modern art, and are in the most important museums and collections worldwide. Lyonel Feininger died on January 13, 1956 in New York.