Lyonel Feininger:
Picture "Clouds Over the Sea" (1924) (Unique piece)
Proportional view
Picture "Clouds Over the Sea" (1924) (Unique piece)
Lyonel Feininger:
Picture "Clouds Over the Sea" (1924) (Unique piece)

Quick info

unique piece | inscribed | dated | pencil on paper | framed | size 31 x 39 cm

Product no. IN-950225.R1
Picture "Clouds Over the Sea" (1924) (Unique piece)
Lyonel Feininger: Picture "Clouds Over the Sea" (1924) (U...

Detailed description

Picture "Clouds Over the Sea" (1924) (Unique piece)

Between 1924 and the year of his emigration from Germany, Bauhaus member Lyonel Feininger spent every summer in the Pomeranian fishing village of Deep. "The sea is beautiful and so deserted and lonely, unlike anything I have ever seen!" he wrote to his wife Julia during his first year there. The resulting devotional, even romantic works are strongly reminiscent of the works of the great German artist Caspar David Friedrich.

The present drawing is also a beautiful variation of the famous romantic motif: Two walkers stand alone on the beach, completely absorbed in contemplating the imposing cloud formation in the sky. Feininger jotted down colour notes in this sketch as reminders for later oil paintings.

Pencil on paper, 1924, inscribed and dated. The work is registered in the Feininger Archive - The Lyonel Feininger Project LLC, New York under no. 1892-02-14-24. Motif size/sheet size 13.8 x 22 cm. Size in frame 31 x 39 cm as shown.

Producer: ARTES Kunsthandelsgesellschaft mbH, Bödekerstraße 13, 30161 Hannover, Deutschland E-Mail: info@kunsthaus-artes.de

Porträt Lyonel Feiningers von Hugo Erfurth

About Lyonel Feininger

1871-1956

Lyonel Feininger is known for his depictions of streets, cities and ships, which are composed of prismatically broken forms and inspired by Cubism and the art of Robert Delaunay.

The painter and graphic artist was born in New York in 1871 as the son of German musicians. He first came to Germany at the age of 16 for a concert tour of his parents and stayed there to study at the Hamburg School of Applied Arts and later at the Royal Prussian Academy in Berlin. After a study visit to Paris, he continued living and working for many years in Germany, where he was close to the "Blauer Reiter" artists' group. Starting in 1919, he made his mark as a master for the graphic workshops of "Bauhaus" in Weimar, Dessau and Berlin.

Feininger, along with Schlemmer, most explicitly realised the Bauhaus ideal of order. For him, the starting point is not the human figure but architecture, the strict geometric structure of forms that he observed in Gothic churches. His studies of the architecture of small German towns established his light-flooded, prismatic style, which was to become a model for many artists.

Feininger first devoted himself to German townscapes and churches. During the National Socialist era, the Nazi Party officially declared Feininger’s work to be "degenerate", which forced him to return to New York in 1937. There he created his famous impressions of the architecture of Manhattan and New York.

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