Lyonel Feininger

Lyonel Feininger Possendorf I 1920 Ink pen and watercolor on fibrous paper. 28,5 x 31,5 cm. Framed under glass. Signed, titled and dated 'Feininger', 'Possendorf' and 'Sonnab. d. 1. Mai 1920' in black below. - With faint light margins and overall lightly browned. 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 1844-03-30-23. A certificate is enclosed with the work. Provenance Private collection North Rhine-Westphalia When Feininger moved with his family to Weimar in the spring of 1919 to take charge of the printmaking workshops at the newly founded Staatliches Bauhaus, he experienced for the first time the artistic recognition he had long hoped for. The new teaching position gave him pleasure and at the same time enabled him to deal with his favorite motifs of the Weimar region in drawings: the simple village churches in the towns of Gelmeroda, Vollersroda and Possendorf. In this sense, he had already written to his artist friend Alfred Kubin in June 1913: "The villages, probably over a hundred, in the area are magnificent! The architecture [...] is just so stimulating to me, in part so immensely monumental! There are [sic] church towers in godforsaken nests, which are to me the most mystical thing I know of so-called culture people!" (Letter dated June 15, 1913, Feininger Archives, Moeller Fine Art Projects). In the summer of 1919, in the village of Possendorf, south of Weimar, Feininger produced an extensive and characteristic series of nature sketches depicting the small houses and the 13th-century church. The following year he resumed his trips to nearby Possendorf, but instead of pencil he now used ink pen and watercolor to capture the village's picturesque houses. For the offered sheet "Possendorf I" he fell back compositionally on one of the pencil sketches made the year before, namely on the drawing "Possendorf" in the Harvard Art Museums (Busch-Reisinger Museum, Gift of Julia Feininger). Compared to the small-format pencil work, which faithfully reproduces the houses with their peculiarly warped roofs, small windows and fences, the ink pen drawing is clearly abstracted. Through the restless stroke and the overdrawing of the outlines, the sheet is also reminiscent of his early caricatures and therefore gives the work a certain lightness.