L. Feininger, typed letter signed ("Lyonel Feininger") to Anna-Clare Hilton, 27 April 1952

FEININGER, LYONEL

Typed letter signed ("Lyonel Feininger") to the 14-year-old student Anna-Clare Hilton, 27 April 1952

explaining the concepts and aims of his art, namely "closely observing and drawing, after Nature, in combination with my love for construction and the counterpoint in the great music of Bach... To attain this aim I need truly not follow the temporary fashion in complexity and unrest -- sometimes downright torment -- but simply seek to solve it by reducing statement to the greatest simplicity..."

2 pages, 266 x 184mm., tipped into an album with other typed letters signed by Walter Gropius and Joseph Binder

Being born into a musical family Lyonel Feininger’s second major source of inspiration, alongside the artistic ideas of the Cubists, was classical music. In the 1920s he devoted himself to the polyphonic fugues by Johann Sebastian Bach, attempting to translate them into a visual framework using light and colour harmonies. For Feininger light and colour were expressions of sublimity, which he achieved in his paintings through the harmonious intertwining of colour, light, and interlocked prismatic compositional arrangements – just as a composer would seek to achieve harmonies through polyphonic compositions. Feininger also composed several fugues which were publicly performed at the Bauhaus academy.