An Artist I Love

I saw a painting in a gallery recently  that reminded how much I enjoy the art of Lyonel Feininger   1871 - 1956.
He was born and raised in New York but moved to Germany at the age of 16 to study art and became one of the leading practitioners of German Expressionism. Forced to leave Germany in the wake of the Nazi  campaign against modern art he returned to the United States. He was somewhat of a renaissance man - photographer, carver of miniature wooden figures and buildings, painter and cartoonist for the Chicago Sun comic strips. He also has been at times, a pianist and composer.

His early works have a lively art nouveau look.

Village Near Paris 1909

This is a cover story about one of his comic strips in the Chicago Tribune

Later his style shifts to a more muted impersonal style. Angular planes of light intersect and overlap, almost like gauze panels in a stage setting. The colours are subdued and the forms somewhat architectural. There is a sense of alienation in some of the later paintings. This is contrasted with the many freeing images of sailboats

Bird Cloud

Church of the Minorites

Sailboats 1929

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