Lionel
Feininger

United States • 1871−1956
Lionel feininger (him. Lyonel Feininger; July 17, 1871, New York - January 13, 1956, New York) - American artist, graphic artist, photographer, cartoonist and composer. He was born and died in America, but he studied, worked and taught for 50 years in Germany and was forced to return to New York with the coming of the Nazis to power.
Feininger, the son of a violinist and singer, came to America at the age of 16 with his parents. Up to 36 years old, he earned brilliant cartoons and children's comics. He has worked with German magazines and the American edition of the Chicago Sunday Tribune for more than 20 years.

But once the cartoonist Feininger saw pictures Picasso and Marriage while traveling to Paris and learned about analytic cubism. Then he seriously began painting and developing his own style, which would later be called cubo-expressionism. He collaborates with the Blue Rider and Most, participates in general exhibitions. Later will be one of the participants of the "Blue Four" - along with Kandinsky, Klee and Yavlensky.
When Walter Gropius started a pilot school project Bauhaus, Lionel Feininger was the first artist to receive an invitation for a teaching position. Feininger headed the printing and wood engraving workshop.

Like all avant-garde artists in Germany, Feininger did not escape persecution from the new National Socialist government. His paintings were removed from museums and included in the exhibition. "Degenerative Art" in 1937.
In America, the artist arrives recognized and famous reformer of painting and education. Here were his exhibitions, heard about him. In many ways, thanks to him and several other former teachers of the Bauhaus, artistic education in America is changing: innovative systems and a passion for experimentation are replacing traditional studies and academic drawing.

Features of the artist Lionel Feininger: Feininger's main artistic discovery was rethinking several directions, their symbiosis. He took a powerful color and volumetric smear from German expressionists, and a geometric, analytical composition from French cubists. Feininger's most impressive works are images of architectural structures: churches, cathedrals, bridges. His method of image is close to the architectural drawing, which someone decided to paint the most intense colors. Impressive cubist translucent, as if watercolor, paintings with sailboats, ancient ruins (which German romantics inspired the artist), sea dawns, steamboats, sunny paths on the waves - Feininger's special passion. In addition to painting, he was seriously engaged in photography and original sculpture-painting installations: he photographed miniature houses and human figures on a picturesque background.

Famous works of Lionel Feininger: "River", "Lady in Lilac", "Helmerod VIII", "Ruins by the Sea".
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