The German-American artist Lyonel Feininger (1871–1956) is a classic name in modern art. The SCHIRN is dedicating the first major retrospective in Germany in over twenty-five years to this important painter and graphic artist, portraying a comprehensive and surprising overview of his creative work. Feininger is famous for his paintings of buildings, crystalline architectures in unmistakable monumentality, and harmonious colors. However, today’s approach often overlooks the originality and wealth of artistic facets in his oeuvre, which reflects many aspects of modernism. The SCHIRN presents main works which are seldom on view and also little-known series like the artist’s recently rediscovered photographs. At an early stage, Feininger developed a highly individual illustrative style as a graphic artist and caricaturist. In addition to central works from his early figurative phase, including political caricatures, humorous-grotesque townscapes, and carnivalesque figures, the exhibition also illustrates his role as one of the first Bauhaus instructors and as a master of graphic techniques such as the drawing and the woodcut. A particular focus lies on Feininger’s pivotal works from the 1930s and his exile in America. The exhibition illuminates important themes and lines of development with some 160 paintings, drawings, caricatures, watercolors, woodcuts, photographs, and objects that make Feininger’s work distinctive and unique.
Schirn
Frankfurt am Main, Germany
