ON VIEW

Although he was born in New York City and always considered himself an American, Lyonel Feininger spent the greater part of his career living and working in Germany. Intending to follow in his father's footsteps as a renowned concert musician, Feininger was still in his teens when he decided to study music in Germany. Once there, he turned to art instead, studying first in Hamburg and later in Berlin. He gained early recognition as a cartoonist, and it was not until 1907 that he took up painting as a profession.

In Paris, Feininger encountered Cubism, whose vocabulary of facets and planes would have a profound impact on the artist. He began to associate with German modernists, and in 1913 he exhibited with the Blaue Reiter (Blue Rider) group whose members included Vassily Kandinsky (1866-1944) and Franz Marc (1880-1916). In 1919 Feininger joined the faculty of the Bauhaus in Weimar, a progressive school of art and design founded by architect Walter Gropius. There he remained until the school was closed under Nazi pressure in 1933. Three years later, Feininger returned to America, where he resided permanently until his death in New York City some two decades afterward.

The Mill in Spring reflects Feininger's absorbing interest in architectural themes. Gothic churches, medieval villages, and other motifs drawn from northern Germany appear frequently in the artist's oeuvre. Painted during a time of pointed nationalism in American art, such obviously "foreign" subjects contributed to the hostile reception that Feininger experienced when he exhibited his work at the Museum of Modern Art in 1929. After his return to America, however, critics became friendlier, and in 1939 Feininger was chosen to decorate three large walls in the courtyard of the Masterpieces of Art Building at the New York World's Fair.

In the Currier's painting, Feininger has taken as his subject a windmill, here depicted on a rise above a cluster of house- and barnlike buildings. Feininger's long study of Cubism informs the structure of the composition, which is broken down into a series of flat, striplike facets. Carefully arranged and balanced, groups of parallel "strips" lighten the stout forms of the buildings and heighten visual interest. While the emphatic angularity of the composition lends dynamism to the image, Feininger also includes horizontal and vertical elements that effectively anchor the subject within the rectilinear frame of the canvas. Feininger's palette of blues, browns, and greens, although subordinate to the painting's strong linearity, introduces added layers of subtlety to the already complex rhythm of the forms. Slight shifts in tone from one element to another, seen particularly within the groupings of parallel facets, enhance the scintillating quality of the painting without disrupting the basic simplicity of the composition as a whole.


The overall effect of The Mill in Spring is one of controlled energy and rhythm that is almost musical in nature. Not surprisingly, music remained a potent force in Feininger's life. Although he denied any deliberate attempts in his art "to express the one in the other," he also stated: "without music I cannot see myself as a painter."(1) The Currier acquired The Mill in Spring not long after the artist died on January 13, 1956.

VSD


NOTE

1. Lyonel Feininger, quoted in Alfred H. Barr Jr., "Lyonel Feininger-American Artist," in Lyonel Feininger/Marsden Hartley, ex. cat. (Museum of Modern Art, 1944), pp. 7-13, at 7.

REFERENCES

"A Painting by Lyonel Feininger." Currier Gallery of Art Bulletin, May 1957, n.p.

Alfred H. Barr Jr. "Lyonel Feininger-American Artist." In Lyonel Feininger/Marsden Hartley. Ex. cat. Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1944.