Feininger, Lyonel

Feininger, Lyonel (1871–1956). American painter, printmaker, and caricaturist who spent most of his career in Europe. He was born in New York into a German-American musical family, and in 1887 he went to Germany with the intention of studying music (he played the violin and also composed); although he later maintained that ‘Music has always been the first influence in my life', he turned instead to art, studying in Hamburg, Berlin, and Paris between 1887 and 1893. After returning from Berlin to Paris, he became a full-time caricaturist and by the turn of the century he was Germany's leading exponent of political cartoons. In 1906 he received a lucrative contract for comic strips from the Chicago Sunday Tribune and this allowed him to live in Paris for the next two years. During this time he turned to painting, and on a subsequent visit to Paris in 1911 he first saw Cubist pictures. Under their influence he quickly evolved a highly distinctive style in which natural forms were treated in terms of a rhythmic pattern of prismatically coloured interpenetrating planes bounded by straight lines—a manner that he applied particularly to architectural and marine subjects. Although—as an American citizen—he was an alien, he remained in Germany throughout the First World War and afterwards taught at the Bauhaus from its foundation in 1919 (one of his woodcuts appeared on the cover of its manifesto) until its closure by the Nazis in 1933; he was the only person to be on the staff from start to finish (although he did little teaching in its later years). From 1919 to 1925 he was in charge of the school's printing workshop, where he was influential in introducing colleagues and students to the technique of woodcut. In 1935 he visited the USA and in 1937 the Nazi exhibition of Degenerate Art (in which his own work was included) made him decide to return there permanently. He settled in New York and adopted the architecture of Manhattan as one of his favourite subjects. At first he found it hard to adjust to his new life, after half a century in Europe, but he became an honoured and respected figure and worked with vigour into his 80s, his later work becoming more colourful and spontaneous. His son Andreas Feininger (1906–99) was a distinguished photographer and writer on photography. Another son, T. Lux Feininger (1910– ), is a photographer and painter.