May 2001 - Nr. 5
Karlsruhe Museum Pays Tribute to Feininger Family
TWIG - Three artists from the same German-American family are sharing the spotlight this spring at the Staedtische Gallerie in Karlsruhe (Baden-Wuerttemberg). From March 31 to June 3, the museum is exhibiting paintings by Lyonel Feininger, a leading member of the Bauhaus movement in Germany, together with photographs, drawings and paintings by his two sons Andreas and T. Lux Feininger, who enjoyed independent careers in the United States.
Perhaps more than any other twentieth-century family of artists, says art historian Ursula Merkel, the Feiningers bring German and American traditions together. Traces of the conflict between the Old World and the New are evident in the work of all three artists, along with an interest in ships, the sea and modern America.
Lyonel Feininger (1871-1956) was born in New York, the son of Karl Friedrich Feininger, a violinist and composer from Durlach (near Karlsruhe). He began a career in music but soon switched to the visual arts, studying in Hamburg, Berlin and Paris and eventually working as a cartoonist for German, French and American newspapers. From 1907 on he devoted himself to painting and printmaking, developing his characteristic style, with its geometric, architectural forms and translucent colour, under the influence of cubism and the work of French painter Robert Delaunay. He played a leading role in the Blaue Reiter group of Munich and taught at the Bauhaus in Weimar and Dessau. His work was included in the infamous "Degenerate Art" exhibition the Nazi regime organized in 1933, and in 1937 Feininger returned permanently to the United States after many years’ residence in Germany.
Feininger’s oldest son, Andreas (1906-1999), was born in Paris, studied architecture in Germany, and launched his career as a professional photographer in Europe in the 1930s. In 1939, he moved to New York, where he became a photographer for Life magazine. His panoramic images of American cities are regarded as milestones in the history of American photography.
T. Lux Feininger, who was born in Berlin in 1910, also enjoyed success as photographer in his early years. He later took up painting, blending German and American cultural traditions to create his own idiosyncratic, often self-ironic style. He now lives and works in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
