1915, Jesuiten III (Jesuits III)
Lyonel Charles Adrian Feininger (*
17 de julio de
1871 en
New York; †
13 de enero de
1956) fue un
pintor e
historietista germano-estadounidense. Desde el año
1909 fue miembro del la asociación artística
Secesión de Berlín (Berliner Sezession).
En su juventud viajó a
Alemania para recibir instrucción musical, actividad que nunca abandonó. Residió así mismo en
Bélgica y
París. Sus inicios en la ilustración fueron difíciles, hasta que en
1906 el periódico Chicago Sunday Tribune le contrató para realizar dos
tiras cómicas semanales: Kinder Kids y Wee Willis Winkies World (1906), en las que inauguraría el uso no-naturalista del color e incorporaría al
cómic la antropomorfización de los personajes no humanos.
Tras conocer el cubismo, su posición estética se adhirió dentro de la pintura expresionista alemana. Participó en la exposición del grupo Der Blaue Reiter, en el primer salón de otoño celebrado en
Berlín. Posteriormente se vinculó al movimiento artístico creado alrededor de la Bauhaus, tras conocer a
Walter Gropius. Su reconocimiento se vio interrumpido con la llegada al poder del
partido nazi, integrándose parte de su obra en la conocida exposición sobre Arte degenerado. Se decidió a trasladarse a los
Estados Unidos, donde tras un periodo de adaptación (era poco conocido, y el cambio de paisaje afectó a su obra), comenzó a integrarse en el circuito artístico. En
1944 el MOMA le compró una obra.
Lyonel Feininger, 1914, Benz VI, oil on canvas, 100 x 125 cm (39.3 x 49.2 in)
Lyonel Charles Feininger (July 17, 1871 – January 13, 1956) was a
German-American painter, and a leading exponent of
Expressionism. He also worked as a
caricaturist and
comic strip artist. He was born and grew up in New York City, traveling to Germany at 16 to study and perfect his art. He started his career as a cartoonist in 1894 and met with much success in this area. He was also a commercial caricaturist for 20 years for magazines and newspapers in the USA and Germany. At the age of 36, he started to work as a fine artist. He also produced a large body of photographic works between 1928 and the mid 1950s, but he kept these primarily within his circle of friends. He was also a pianist and composer, with several piano compositions and fugues for organ extant.
Lyonel Feininger was born to German-American violinist and composer
Karl Feininger and American singer Elizabeth Feininger.
[1] He was born and grew up in
New York City,
[2] but traveled to Germany at the age of 16 in 1887
[3] to study. In 1888, he moved to Berlin and studied at the
Königliche Akademie Berlin under
Ernst Hancke. He continued his studies at art schools in Berlin with
Karl Schlabitz, and in Paris with sculptor
Filippo Colarossi. He started as a caricaturist for several magazines including
Harper's Round Table,
Harper's Young People, Humoristische Blätter, Lustige Blätter,
Das Narrenschiff,
Berliner Tageblatt and
Ulk.
Lyonel Feininger, 1924, Gaberndorf II
In 1900, he met Clara Fürst, daughter of the painter
Gustav Fürst. He married her in 1901, and they had two daughters. In 1905, he separated from his wife after meeting Julia Berg. He married Berg in 1908 and had several children with her.
The artist was represented with drawings at the exhibitions of the annual
Berlin Secession in the years 1901 through 1903.
Feininger's career as cartoonist started in 1894. He was working for several German, French and American magazines. In February 1906, when a quarter of Chicago's population was of German descent,
James Keeley, editor of The
Chicago Tribune traveled to Germany to procure the services of the most popular humor artists. He recruited Feininger to illustrate two comic strips "
The Kin-der-Kids" and "
Wee Willie Winkie's World" for theChicago Tribune.
[1][4] The strips were noted for their
fey humor and graphic experimentation. He also worked as a commercial caricaturist for 20 years for various newspapers and magazines in both the
USA and
Germany. Later,
Art Spiegelman wrote in
The New York Times Book Review, that Feininger's comics have “achieved a breathtaking formal grace unsurpassed in the history of the medium.”
[4]
From 1909 until 1921, Feininger spent summer vacations on the island of
Usedom to recover and to get new inspiration.
[2] He continued to create paintings and drawings of
Benz for the rest of his life, even after returning to live in the United States. A tour of the sites appearing in the works of Feininger follows a path with markers in the ground to guide visitors.
He designed the cover for the Bauhaus 1919 manifesto: an expressionist
woodcut 'cathedral'. He taught at the Bauhaus for several years. Among the students who attended his workshops were
Ludwig Hirschfeld Mack(German/Australian (1893–1965),
Hans Friedrich Grohs (German 1892 - 1981), and
Margarete Koehler-Bittkow (German/American, 1898–1964).
When the
Nazi Party came to power in 1933, the situation became unbearable for Feininger and his wife. The Nazi Party declared his work to be "degenerate."
[1] They moved to America after his work was exhibited in the '
degenerate art' (Entartete Kunst) in 1936, but before the 1937 exhibition in
Munich. He taught at
Mills College before returning to New York.
[1] He was elected to the
American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1955.
[6]
In addition to drawing, Feininger created art with painted toy figures being photographed in front of drawn backgrounds.
[7]
Feininger produced a large body of photographic works between 1928 and the mid-1950s. He kept his photographic work within his circle of friends, and it was not shared with the public in his lifetime. He gave some prints away to his colleagues
Walter Gropius and
Alfred H. Barr, Jr..
[5]Feininger also had intermittent activity as a pianist and composer, with several piano compositions and fugues for organ extant.
His sons,
Andreas Feininger and
T. Lux Feininger, both became noted artists, the former as a photographer and the latter as a photographer and painter. T. Lux Feininger died July 7, 2011 at the age of 101.
[8] 
A major retrospective exhibition of Lyonel Feininger's work, initially at the
Whitney Museum of American Art during June 30-October 16, 2011, was subsequently due to run at the
Montreal Museum of Fine Arts during January 20–May 13, 2012. The exhibition is described as "the first in Feininger’s native country in more than forty-five years, and the first ever to include the full breadth of his art" and as "accompanied by a richly illustrated monograph with a feature essay that provides a broad overview of Feininger’s career..."
[9] Many critics have argued that the artist's work was at its most mature around 1910 in works in which the power of Feininger as illustrator balance his abstract side; however, we have to consider the possibility that Feininger used cubism as a more artistically succinct tool to establish his version of the concept known as the objective correlative.
