Lyonel Feininger
1871-1956
Lyonel Feininger was a Cubist / Expressionist painter, illustrator, superb caricaturist and printmaker. He was loved for his lighthearted subject matter, known for clean, crystalline abstract seascapes and powerful urban scenes. His bold and expressive designs follow in the footsteps of the great Germanic woodcutting tradition.
Lyonel Feininger was born in New York City, on July 17, 1871. The son of two German accomplished musicians, he was expected to study music but he attended the Berlin Art Academy and the Cola Rossi Academy in Paris. Although born in New York, Lyonel Feininger lived and worked mostly in Germany.
Feininger's career as cartoonist started in 1894. He was working for a number of German, French and American magazines. He was hired to illustrate two comic strips 'The Kin-der-Kids' and 'Wee Willie Winkie's World' for the Chicago Tribune. After a few months he left these strips and went on with his career as a celebrated painter and artist.
Feininger was deeply influenced by the Futurists and adopted prismatic style, with facets that are forming three-dimensional objects. That's why he was named Form Master. In 1919, Feininger became a founding member of the legendary Bauhaus school of art and architecture at Weimar and later in Dessau until it was closed in 1932. Because his wife was Jewish and fascists forced him to give up his American citizenship, the couple decided to return to New York in 1937. There he worked and died at age 85 in January 1956.
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