Lyonel Feininger : From Manhattan To The Bauhaus

Carnival, painted in 1908, soon after Feininger had begun to explore painting after a successful career as an illustrator. Photograph: National Galerie, Staatliche Museen, Berlin/MMFA Photograph: National Galerie, Staatliche Museen, Berlin/Action images Uprising, painted in 1910. The oblique perspective and distorted scale are a foretaste of Feininger's subsequent encounter with cubism. Photograph: The Museum of Modern Art, New York/MMFA Photograph: The Museum of Modern Art, New York/Action images Carnival in Arcueil, painted in 1911. Feininger's work around this time often included a carnival world with larger-than-life figures in vibrant colours. Photograph: The Art Institute of Chicago; Joseph Winterbotham Collection/MMFA Photograph: The Art Institute of Chicago; Joseph Winterbotham Collection/Action images Bathers on the Beach I, painted in 1912 soon after Feininger moved on from the drawings, illustrations and caricatures that made up the early part of his career. Photograph: Harvard Art Museums, Busch-Reisinger Museum/MMFA Photograph: Harvard Art Museums, Busch-Reisinger Museum/Action images Gables I, Lünenberg. Prior to his Bauhaus period, Feininger joined the German avant-garde of Klee, Kandinsky and Franz Marc. His Gables series shows a use of geometric planes set at angles to achieve volume. Photograph: Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton/MMFA Photograph: Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton/Action images Jesuits III. Painted in 1915, around the same time as his Gables series, Feininger's Jesuits series is, by contrast, full of lively colours. Photograph: Private Collection/MMFA Photograph: Private Collection/Action images The Green Bridge II, painted in 1916, is another example of Feininger's pre-Bauhaus period. Photograph: North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh/MMFA Photograph: North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh/Action images Yellow Street II, painted in 1918. Like the Jesuits series of the same era, the lively colours of Yellow Street II contrast with his Gables series, where Feininger often eschewed the colours of expressionism in favour of greys. Photograph: MMFA Photograph: Action images Bird Cloud, painted in 1926. By now Feininger had become a leading light in the Bauhaus movement. His works at this time were often inspired by architecture or nature. Photograph: Harvard Art Museums/Busch-Reisinger Museum/MMFA Photograph: Harvard Art Museums/Busch-Reisinger Museum/Action images The Spell, painted in 1951. The rise of Nazism saw Feininger return home to New York in 1937, aged 66. During the 1950s he painted mainly Manhattan streets, bridges, trains, steamships and sailing boats using watercolours and oils. Photograph: Collection of Geraldine S Kunstadter, courtesy Moeller Fine Art, New York-Berlin/MMFA Photograph: Collection of Geraldine S Kunstadter, courtesy Moeller Fine Art, New York-Berlin/Action images