Gelmeroda, from: Masters' Portfolio of the State Bauhaus (Meistermappe des Staatlichen Bauhauses)

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Gelmeroda, from: Masters' Portfolio of the State Bauhaus (Meistermappe des Staatlichen Bauhauses)

Artist Lyonel Feininger (American, 1871 - 1956)

Publisher Staatliches Bauhaus, Weimar

Printer Staatliches Bauhaus, Weimar

Date1920 (published 1923)

DimensionsOverall: 16 x 12 3/16 in. (40.6 x 30.9 cm)

MediumWoodcut

ClassificationPrints

Credit LinePurchased with funds from the Libbey Endowment, Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey

Object number

1994.3

Not on View

Label TextLyonel Feininger often represented the village church of Gelmeroda near Weimar, Germany. He wrote of "church steeples … which belong among the most mystical achievements of so-called civilized man." In this woodcut, he joined the spirituality of the Gothic tradition to a Cubist treatment of form. Feininger sought to express "the eternal calm of objects and even the air surrounding them" to find a sense of physical and spiritual order in a difficult time. Feininger was trained as a musician, but at age 16 turned to a career in art. Music, Feininger said, remained the “language of my innermost soul” and Bach, he declared, was his inspiration and “master in painting.” Feininger especially enjoyed drawing and painting in the small towns around Weimar where Bach had spent many important years. He once wrote, “There are church towers in God-forsaken places that are among the most mystical things I know of.” These steeples became a recurring motif, especially this one in Gelmeroda just south of Weimar that Feininger drew obsessively for years. He worked in a Cubist-inflected geometric style of interlocking planes that a present day critic has described as, “no thicker than glass or more solid than light, but as hard as diamonds.”Exhibition HistoryToledo Museum of Art, The Modern Woodcut 5/12/00 - 7/23/00 Toledo Museum of Art, Between the Wars; Sept. 5 2008 through Dec.31 2008.

Toledo Museum of Art, The Bauhaus Experiment: Art & Design from the Toledo Museum of Art, August 25, 2020-February 7, 2021.