Lyonel Feininger German Exhibition
Kunstsammlungen in Chemnitz Hosts the Harold Loebermann Collection
The artist's drawings, prints, and watercolors represent his distinctive originality with characteristics of major styles of modern art.
Modern artist Lyonel Feininger 's (1871-1956) 200 woodcuts, 23 etchings, 6 lithographs, and 56 drawings and watercolors in the Loeberman Collection is on exhibiton in the Kunstsammlungen near Chemnitz Germany until February 2007.
The architect Harold Loebermann was attracted to Feininger's works because of their pronounced architectural-like elements. Feininger and Frank Lloyd Wright are drawn together for their shared search for "the hidden laws of nature." As Feininger wrote, "The laws of nature, into which we delve when we create form, are and remain unsuspected by others. Yes, our sensitivity, our capacity for feeling, our desire—it is these that reveal the new laws of nature, visible to us alone."
Works on paper are not a secondary or peripheral aspect of Feininger's works. He was drawn to fine handmade papers and like many modern artists, also to the printing process for its possibilities for new avenues of expression and its technical capabilities regraphic-like stylistic elements. Paper lent itself favorably to Feininger's matured style that incorporated elements of expressionism, cubism, fauvism, and futurism. Feiniger's distictive style formed a "multi-layered symbiosis between Romanticism, reality, and vision" and is widely described as "Crystalline Cubism" for the particular, architecture-like sharpness of its forms.
Feininger was born and died in New York City. From the latter 1800s until 1937, he lived and worked in Germany. The Nazis declared Feininger's work, along with that of many other modern artists, "degenerate art," and removed hundreds of his works from German museums in 1937, the year Feininger returned to New York City where he could freely continue his artistic path.
Lyonel Feininger Loebermann Collection, Drawings, Watercolors, Prints, edited by Ingrid Mossinger and Kerstin Drechsel. Munich and New York: Prestel, 2006. 296 pages. $75.00 hardcover, 9" x 12", ISBN 978-3-7913-3767-8. color illustrations, notes.
