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拍品專文
The Thuringian village of Sssenborn lies just a few kilometers outside Weimar, where Feininger lived and taught at the Bauhaus from 1919 until 1925. Feininger wrote in a letter to his friend Kubin: "The villages - there must be nearly a hundred in the vicinity - are gorgeous. The architecture (you know how much I depend on it) is just to my liking. So inspiring - here and there uncommonly monumental" (c.f.: Letter to Alfred Kubin, Weimar, June 15, 1913, c.f. J.L. Ness (ed.), Lyonel Feininger, New York 1974, p. 40) The painting is based on an earlier charcoal drawing of the same title, dated July 17, 1913 (n.B.: the artist's 42nd birthday).
As early as 1906, while courting his future wife Julia, who was studying painting at Weimar, Feininger became fascinated with the small towns and villages in surrounding Thuringia, making the chuch spires and town halls the subjects of a number of paintings. Therefore, when he was asked by Walter Gropius in 1919 to join in the creation of a new school, the Bauhaus in Weimar, Feininger immediately accepted the invitation, becoming the first 'master' (as the professors were called) of the Bauhaus.
His style and artistic outlook made him the logical choice, and when Walter Gropius describes his ideals in Idee und Aufbau des Staatlichen Bauhauses, his words summarise perfectly Feininger's artistic ideals, "Man invents through his own intuition, through his metaphysical powers, which he draws from the universe, the immaterial space of semblance. But this space of vision aims at its realisation in the material world; with spirit and work, matter is mastered" (H. Hess, op. cit., p. 88).
The spirit, and indeed the name, of the Bauhaus was derived from the Romantic illusion of the medieval "Bauhtte", in which the spirit of devoted craftsmanship was to be emulated in the modern world. "Medieval mysticism as well as modern political thought was the root of Bauhaus ethics. The romantic ideal of the medieval Bauhtte may be an illusion, but even illusions become powerful and effective when they are believed. The romantic conception of the Middle Ages was thus linked with the modern romanticism of the machine. The Bauhaus could become part of the myth of the twentieth century because it shared it" (op. cit., p. 89).
This conjunction of medievalism and avant garde artistic practice, is well demonstrated in the present painting. Sssenborn, in depicting the jagged and elongated features of the houses of the small rural town of Sssenborn, broken up into the artist's classic prismic shapes, shares much with the German Gothic masters of the past. As Hess points out: "In Feininger's work, the choice of color itself is often Gothic. The strange pale yellows and distant bluish greens, which can be found also in Altdorfer and Bosch, are colors that deviate by only a slight degree from natural color, and, by their very slight departure from the observed, remove the whole scene into a world quite recognizable but unreal" (op. cit., p. 98).
To be included in the forthcoming Lyonel Feininger catalogue raisonné currently being prepared by Achim Moeller, New York.
We are extremely grateful to Achim Moeller for his assistance in preparing this catalogue entry.
As early as 1906, while courting his future wife Julia, who was studying painting at Weimar, Feininger became fascinated with the small towns and villages in surrounding Thuringia, making the chuch spires and town halls the subjects of a number of paintings. Therefore, when he was asked by Walter Gropius in 1919 to join in the creation of a new school, the Bauhaus in Weimar, Feininger immediately accepted the invitation, becoming the first 'master' (as the professors were called) of the Bauhaus.
His style and artistic outlook made him the logical choice, and when Walter Gropius describes his ideals in Idee und Aufbau des Staatlichen Bauhauses, his words summarise perfectly Feininger's artistic ideals, "Man invents through his own intuition, through his metaphysical powers, which he draws from the universe, the immaterial space of semblance. But this space of vision aims at its realisation in the material world; with spirit and work, matter is mastered" (H. Hess, op. cit., p. 88).
The spirit, and indeed the name, of the Bauhaus was derived from the Romantic illusion of the medieval "Bauhtte", in which the spirit of devoted craftsmanship was to be emulated in the modern world. "Medieval mysticism as well as modern political thought was the root of Bauhaus ethics. The romantic ideal of the medieval Bauhtte may be an illusion, but even illusions become powerful and effective when they are believed. The romantic conception of the Middle Ages was thus linked with the modern romanticism of the machine. The Bauhaus could become part of the myth of the twentieth century because it shared it" (op. cit., p. 89).
This conjunction of medievalism and avant garde artistic practice, is well demonstrated in the present painting. Sssenborn, in depicting the jagged and elongated features of the houses of the small rural town of Sssenborn, broken up into the artist's classic prismic shapes, shares much with the German Gothic masters of the past. As Hess points out: "In Feininger's work, the choice of color itself is often Gothic. The strange pale yellows and distant bluish greens, which can be found also in Altdorfer and Bosch, are colors that deviate by only a slight degree from natural color, and, by their very slight departure from the observed, remove the whole scene into a world quite recognizable but unreal" (op. cit., p. 98).
To be included in the forthcoming Lyonel Feininger catalogue raisonné currently being prepared by Achim Moeller, New York.
We are extremely grateful to Achim Moeller for his assistance in preparing this catalogue entry.