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Cloud

Cloud

Artist: Lyonel Feininger (American, 1871 - 1956)
Date: 1941
Dimensions:
Overall: 12 3/8 x 18 7/8 in. (314 x 479mm)
Medium: Ink and watercolor and charcoal
Classification: Drawings
Credit Line: Gift of Mr. and Mrs. David K. Welles
Object number: 1986.41
Label Text:Lyonel Feininger left his home in New York and moved to Hamburg, Germany in 1886 to study music. There he developed a passion for graphic arts and enrolled at the Akedmie der Künste in Berlin. Early in his career, Feininger was one of the most inventive illustrators working in Europe and had artwork featured in both German and American publications. His comic strips for the Chicago Sunday Tribune, “The Kin-der-Kids” and “Wee Willie Winkie’s World” are particularly noteworthy for their graphic inventiveness.

Feininger eventually abandoned commercial art and went on to become a leading proponent of Expressionism. In 1919 he began a long association with the Bauhaus, a progressive Weimar art school that combined crafts with the fine arts. The Bauhaus was forced to close in 1933 and the Nazis declared Feininger’s abstract art “degenerate.”Escaping the repressive regime, he returned to the United States in 1937.

In this drawing Feininger unites a network of intersecting planes, characteristic of Cubism, with luminous color inspired by the sky of California where Feininger settled.
Not on view
In Collection(s)