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Artist Lyonel Feininger (American, 1871 - 1956)

Date1941

DimensionsOverall: 12 3/8 x 18 7/8 in. (314 x 479mm)

MediumInk and watercolor and charcoal

ClassificationDrawings

Credit LineGift of Mr. and Mrs. David K. Welles

Object number

1986.41

Not on View

Label TextLyonel 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.Exhibition HistoryTMA: Transparent Color, May 3 - August 25, 2002 Toledo Museum of Art, Looks Good on Paper: Masterworks and Favorites, Oct. 10, 2014-Jan. 11, 2015.