Lyonel Feininger

2 photographs, including Steam Engine Abstraction and Toy Yachts, the first with credit and date and the second annotated by the artist's son, Andreas Feininger, in pencil, and other annotations in red and blue pencil, on the reverse, circa 1928-30 (2)

Gift of Andreas Feininger, son of Lyonel Feininger, to the present owner, 1998

These prints are in generally excellent condition. Steam Engine, 1928 - This early print is on Agfa Brovira paper with a semi-glossy surface. A small area of emulsion has lifted from the tip of the lower right corner. The following are written in an unidentified hand in red pencil on the reverse: '#477' (circled); 'CCC/III'; '261' (marked out); '4/238' (marked out). Toy Yachts, circa 1930 - This somewhat warm-toned early print, is on single-to-medium-weight paper with a semi-glossy surface. The edges are somewhat rubbed, and the print corners are bumped, with small emulsion losses. There is a small droplet-like deposit of indeterminate nature, possibly ink, in the upper right corner of the print. When examined in raking light, a soft crease in the lower left corner, as well as several small soft handling creases near the left and right edges are visible. On the verso, 'Lux F.' has been written in blue pencil in an unidentified hand, and 'not used, but similar to, 3% berz' has been written in pencil by the photographer's son, Andreas Feininger.
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Photographs by American-born Lyonel Feininger, one of the most versatile artists in the European modernist movement, are scarce.  The bulk of Feininger's photographic legacy–about 500 prints from the 1920s and 1930s, as well as thousands of negatives and slides–is housed in the Lyonel Feininger Archive at Harvard University's Busch-Reisinger Museum at the Houghton Library. 

Although Feininger was known to have photographed as early as 1904, he became a serious enthusiast in his late fifties while a master at the Bauhaus, where he had access to darkroom facilities.  The artist gave photographs to friends and family, but never exhibited or sold them. Author and assistant curator at the Busch-Reisinger, Laura Muir, to whom this essay is indebted, suggests that, among other things, photography was a personal pursuit for Feininger, who did not want to encroach on the photographic careers of his sons, Andreas and Lux.  By 1929, both sons were licensing their work for publication through the Berlin photo agency Deutscher Photodienst and participating in the avant-garde exhibitions of the day. (Laura Muir, Lyonel Feininger: Photographs, 1928-1939, p. 13).

Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius invited Feininger to join the progressive German art school as a master in 1919.  While formal studies in photography began there ten years later, it was László Moholy-Nagy's arrival at the Bauhaus in 1923 that contributed to the rage for the medium among its students and likely inspired Feininger to return to the camera.  Moholy's enthusiastic experiments and writings on photography as a viable means of artistic expression, contributed to what Muir calls 'the school's obsession with the medium.'  By the time the Feiningers and Moholy-Nagys became neighbors in 1926, sharing a two-family house provided by the school, Moholy's influence had grown.  He had published Painting, Photography, Film in 1925, and Muir points out that, with the exception of the photogram, Feininger utilized all of the techniques in the book—'rendering the familiar unfamiliar through unexpected viewpoints, extreme close-ups, radical cropping, negative printing'—to create his own experimental and highly personal photographs. (ibid., pp. 18-19)

The photographs offered here are of subjects favored by Feininger.  The artist's love of trains, stemming from his New York childhood, was frequently manifested in his paintings and drawings.  During the winter of 1928, Feininger made a number of photographs at the Dessau train station from a bridge spanning the tracks, paying particular attention to how steam, smoke, and cold affected the appearance of the trains and rails.  He would continue photographing railroad scenes until the end of his life.

Coastal themes were also fodder for Feininger's artistic output.  Beginning in 1892, Feininger spent summers on the Baltic coast, making sketches that were the basis for paintings and drawings.  After 1928, Feininger photographed his family and their activities and surroundings during these summer sojourns.  As with the photographs offered here, Feininger transforms the toy yachts that he and son Lux crafted and sailed, at Deep an der Rega on the Baltic, into full-sized sailboats.