Lyonel Feininger--a short appreciation

from Escutcheon Blot

'Marktkirche von Halle'
I have been looking back at the last few months of Liverputty International, and thought that I might put in a little art appreciation of one of my favorite painters, the American-German-American modernist, Lyonel Feininger.

Born in America to German parents, Feininger migrated to Germany as a teenager, and studied art, eventually becoming a caricaturist and cartoonist. Only in his middle thirties did he start seriously painting. A member of both the Bauhaus movement (where he taught) and the Famous Blaue Reiter group (with Kandinsky, Franz Marc, et al) he was quite popular until the rise of the Nazis in 1933. In 1936 he and his jewish-descended wife emigrated back to America, when Feininger's works were included in the tour of Degenerate Art, organized by Goering. He spent the rest of his life in New York. Feininger was one of the only artists to further explore the early cubist theories of Picasso and Braques--indeed, he never departed from the basic cubist premises. But his works speak for themselves.

'Vogel Wolke'

'The Village Pond of Gelmeroda' (1922)

'Niedergrunstet'

'HOHE HÄUSER IV' (1919)

'Jesuiten III' (1915)

'Gaberndorf II' (1924)