‘Everybody here is charming! [...] Reception at Klee’s house […] tea with Kandinskys’, wrote Feininger in a letter to his wife in July 1926 (quoted in Hans Hess, Lyonel Feininger, New York, 1961, p. 108). Moving with the Bauhaus to Dessau in July 1926, Feininger experienced a greater sense of freedom than had been afforded to him previously. Living as an artist in residence, and liberated from the limitations of teaching, Feininger pursued painting more independently and his reputation as a leading artist began to grow rapidly.
Alongside working at the Bauhaus, Feininger had been a member of Die Blaue Vier, together with Klee, Kandinsky and Jawlensky. Die Blaue Vier led Feininger towards a deeper understanding of the expressive potential of colour. Similarities can be drawn between Feininger’s planar revelations and the striated canvases of Klee, in which the simple linear arrangement creates compositional depth and colours that resonate. Marked by a more distinct infusion of light, colour and formal strength, Zottelstedt II is an important work from a key period in the artist’s œuvre.
Feininger first depicted the tower in Zottelstedt in June 1913 and returned to the motif several times in different media, executing three woodcuts of the same subject published in 1918, a watercolour in 1922 and one other oil painting in 1916 titled Zottelstedt I.
Defined by a dramatic interplay of light and shadow, the prismatic arrangement of Zottelstedt II marries the architectural with the transcendental. It was this unique blending of previously disparate ideas that led to Walter Gropius’s appointment of Feininger as Formmeister at the Bauhaus in 1919. Feininger’s vision became integral to the Bauhaus ideology. His architectural compositions act as a unifying force, merging art and design with a pervasive atmosphere of spirituality.
Painted during a time in which Feininger exercised his autonomy of expression, Zottelstedt II pushes the boundaries of painterly exploration. Drawing on formal innovations found within Cubism and Italian Futurism, Feininger succeeded in creating a new pictorial reality, one in which space and light were arranged independently, an approach which rendered colour of paramount importance: ‘The interplay of colours creates a living, vibrating process that is not static but fluid. To the dynamism of form the sonority of colour has been added. There are, thus, more mobile powers to interact and enrich the sum of possibilities’ (Feininger quoted in, ibid, p. 112).
In Zottelstedt II, Feininger introduced a striking balance between warm and cool tones, further heightening the energy of the composition - earthy reds and bright oranges offset deep blues and pastel greens. Blending Expressionist colours with the planes of Cubo-Futurism, the present work breaks away from Cubism’s static constraints. The intersecting planes that fragment the complex composition offer a dazzling mirage that seems to slide in and out of existence. Zottelstedt II achieves a sense of the ephemeral whilst remaining rooted within a structural framework.
“[…] to Feininger the world dissolves into transparency. Not the romantic boundless universe, without end or beginning, but the classical universe of bounds and order. The poetry of the world is the content of Feininger’s pictures. Silence is the precondition of harmony, stillness the void in which events find their resonance; and out of nothing appears the iridescence of the invisible made actual.”
Remaining in Feininger’s personal collection for several years, his attachment to Zottelstedt II is noted in a 1945 letter to Curt Valentin: ‘[…] I am writing to your private address to give you instructions regarding the following paintings: `Town Hall of Zottelstedt, 1927` and `Village Street, 1927-29’ […]. They are in a category, together with several other older paintings, which I should only consider selling under exceptional conditions’ (Feininger quoted in a letter to Curt Valentin, 7th July 1945, Curt Valentin Papers, The Museum of Modern Art Archives, New York, III.A.10.[4]).
Additional information for this entry was provided by The Lyonel Feininger Project (Moeller Fine Art Projects), New York – Berlin.
