Lyonel Feininger

Lyonel Feininger Design for Marine Transportation Building, New York World's Fair 1938 Watercolor, charcoal and ink pen on ivory handmade paper with watermark "Canson & Montgolfier France". 23.8 x 62.7 cm. Framed under glass. Signed and dated in black lower left 'Feininger 1938' and inscribed in black lower margin 'design for "Marine Transportation" New York World's Fair, 1939'. Numbered '3)' at lower right. Marked on the reverse with the oval estate stamp 'Feininger Estate' (not in Lugt) and numbered in pencil '110'. - In the margin faintly browned and with traces of a former mounting, professionally closed, as well as isolated, minimal tears. Achim Moeller, Director of the Lyonel Feininger Project LLC, New York - Berlin, has confirmed the authenticity of this work, which is registered in the Lyonel Feininger Project archive under the number 1832-02-10-23. A certificate is enclosed with the work. Provenance Lyonel Feininger Estate, New York; Marlborough Fine Art, London, 1996 (with label on protective cardboard on the reverse); Walter Brune Collection, Düsseldorf In June 1937, Lyonel Feininger returned to New York with his wife Julia after more than 50 years in Europe. The massive restrictions on his artistic work and also his wife's Jewish origins had led to this decision. For Feininger it was a new beginning in every respect. Apart from the fact that his hometown had become a stranger to him, he was initially virtually unknown as an artist in the U.S. and had to adjust to a different group of buyers as well as changed interests on the part of the museums. To bridge the initial period financially, he was able to teach at California's Mills College in the summer of 1937 and rely on the contacts of his German-American agent Emmy (Galka) Scheyer, who was able to sell some of his paintings. However, the art historian William R. Valentiner, whom he knew from Berlin and who was now the director of the Detroit Museum of Art, helped him to make a decisive start in his new environment. In 1938, he arranged for Feininger to be commissioned to paint a mural on the facade of the "Marine Transportation Building," which was to be built and artistically designed in connection with the 1939 World's Fair. The execution of three further paintings for the "Masterpieces of Art Building" was also the result of Valentiner's mediation. The aforementioned buildings and their artistic design were measures taken by the American government as part of the "New Deal" to reduce unemployment and enable artists to survive in the midst of the economic crisis. The goal of the "Federal Art Project[s]" was also to open a dialogue between art and the general public. For this reason, certain themes and narrative, realistic representation were preferred for the murals. Having hardly painted at all during the first year of his American period, Feininger was delighted to accept the commission for the murals. The project also suited him in terms of the maritime themes he wanted. For the flat but broad buildings, he designed the emphatically landscape-format watercolors of a "Three-Master at Sea" and a "Passenger Steamer with Wind Rose." In both panoramas Feininger brought his repertoire of ship models to a special format. The study of the three-master shows a mighty sailing ship on a darkly shimmering sea, towering high, carried by a wave and propelled forward by luminous red streaks of light. The many diagonal ink pen lines served him to counter the dominating horizontal surfaces. In the second watercolor, a passenger steamer takes center stage, framed by fishing boats and smaller sailing vessels. A slight slant of the hull and the steamer's diagonal smoke dynamize the watercolor, which is in various shades of blue. Since the pavilions were either demolished or fell into disrepair after the end of the World's Fair and his greatest works are therefore not preserved except for the design drawings, the two watercolors are particularly valuable for Feininger lovers.