Lyonel Feininger: Retrospective

The German-American artist Lyonel Feininger (1871–1956) is a classic protagonist of modern art. The Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt is dedicating an extensive retrospective to the important painter and graphic artist—the first in Germany in twenty-five years—thus providing an in-depth and surprising overall picture of his work. Feininger is known for his paintings of buildings, which are crystalline architectures with an unmistakable monumentality and harmony of color. The reception of his work today, however, often overlooks the originality and abundance of artistic facets in his oeuvre, which reflects numerous tendencies of modernity. Several seemingly opposing interests run through his work with great continuity and are part of his distinct signature.

Dr. Sebastian Baden, director of the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, emphasizes: “Lyonel Feininger is among the best-known representatives of classical modernism in Germany, but the many-sidedness of his art is nevertheless surprisingly unfamiliar to a broader audience. The extensive retrospective at the Schirn now offers a spectacular reconsideration of his oeuvre as a whole from sixty years of artistic work, with important and rarely shown loans from collections in Europe and the United States. In this unique show, the multifaceted character of his total body of work, which holds astonishing discoveries, becomes clear.”

The Schirn is presenting rarely shown works like The Cyclists (1912), Self-Portrait (1915), Zirchow VII (1918), Gelmeroda XIII (1936), and Manhattan I (1940), but also lesser-known works such as the artist’s photographs, which were just rediscovered a short time ago. Feininger already developed his very own style as a graphic artist and caricaturist at an early point in time. Besides central works from the early figurative phase with political caricatures, humorous-grotesque city views, and carnivalesque figures, the exhibition also sheds light on his role as a teacher at the Bauhaus and a master of graphic techniques like drawing and the woodcut. A special focus is put on the artist’s exile in the United States, with central works from this period. With roughly 160 paintings, caricatures, watercolors, woodcuts, photographs, and objects, the exhibition highlights important topics and lines of development that shaped Feininger’s work and make it unique.

Dr. Ingrid Pfeiffer, curator of the exhibition, elucidates: “Lyonel Feininger’s outstanding body of work represents numerous currents in the art of the twentieth century in a highly exemplary manner, yet it is extremely individual. His artistic development does not take place linearly, but instead evinces numerous leaps and recourses to earlier topics. Feininger’s big themes simultaneously become visible across all mediums, extending up to his late work. His independent thinking is free of hierarchies, and the contradictory and the different are also tolerated. While it is often serious, constructed, and monumental at first glance, it is also an oeuvre full of surprises, profound melancholy, and playful lightness.”

For the presentation, the Schirn was able to obtain important loans from numerous German and international museums, as well as public and private collections, and bring them together in Frankfurt. The lenders include, among others, the Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin; Harvard Art Museums/Busch-Reisinger Museum, Cambridge, MA; Museum Lyonel Feininger, Quedlinburg; Kunstmuseum Basel; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museo de Arte Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Museum Folkwang, Essen; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Sprengel Museum Hannover; Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie; Staatsgalerie Stuttgart; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

The exhibition Lyonel Feininger: Retrospective is supported by the Hessische Kulturstiftung and the Ernst Max von Grunelius-Stiftung. Additional support comes from the Fraport AG, the Fontana Stiftung, and the Georg und Franziska Speyer’schen Hochschulstiftung.

A catalog LYONEL FEININGER: RETROSPECTIVE edited by Ingrid Pfeiffer has been published, with contributions by Ute Ackermann, Sebastian Ehlert, Anna Huber, Gloria Köpnick, Franziska Lampe, Barbara Leven, Achim Moeller, and Ingrid Pfeiffer, along with a foreword by Sebastian Baden, the Director of the Schirn.

The free digital educational offer Digitorial can be accessed at feininger.schirn.de.

Director: Dr. Sebastian Baden
Curator: Dr. Ingrid Pfeiffer, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt
Press contact: Johanna Pulz (Head of Press/Public Relations): presse [​at​] schirn.de / T +49 (0) 69 29 98 82 148
Press material: schirn.de/newsroom