Lot Essay
In May 1919 Feininger was present in Weimar with Walter Gropius at the founding of the Bauhaus. In 1920 he took up residence at Gtenbergstrasse 16 in Weimar, his home for the next six years, until the Weimar Bauhaus closed and moved to Dessau.
The present work depicts a bridge in Weimar that Feininger had painted in oils four times previously, including three numbered versions of Brcke between 1914 and 1917 (Hess nos. 100, 127 and 174) and Brcke in Weimar, 1918 (Hess no. 191).
In 1921, when Feininger was fifty, two events had a significant impact on his artistic sensibility. The first was an exhibition of his paintings together with Klee, curated by Wilhelm Khler of the Weimar Museum. Khler juxtaposed their paintings with those of German Gothic masters from the museum collection. Both Feininger and Klee were suprised at how well the modernity of their work harmonized with mystical and spiritual character of the medieval artists. For the latter, nature was observed and depicted as an aspect of reality, but at the same time it held a symbolical dimension: earth was fleeting and temporal, the sky was a vision of eternity. In the present work Feininger's bridge is a translation of a real object into pictorial form, but at the same time it is a symbol which resonates of passage and transfiguration.
The second event was Feininger's renewed interest in music, a passion he shared with Klee, who was an accomplished violinist. Feininger began to compose fugues at his piano and harmonium. "[He] investigated the possibilities of inversion, of mirror effects, of overlapping, and of the interpenetration and synchronization of events. These principles of fugal construction are all used in music to build a temporal order; Feininger applied them to his paintings" (H. Hess, Lyonel Feininger, New York, 1961, p. 98). In Brcke A, the repeated arching forms, the bridge and sky mirrored in the water below, and the oscillating, overlapping contours display an almost musical approach to the translation of nature into abstracted form.
The present work depicts a bridge in Weimar that Feininger had painted in oils four times previously, including three numbered versions of Brcke between 1914 and 1917 (Hess nos. 100, 127 and 174) and Brcke in Weimar, 1918 (Hess no. 191).
In 1921, when Feininger was fifty, two events had a significant impact on his artistic sensibility. The first was an exhibition of his paintings together with Klee, curated by Wilhelm Khler of the Weimar Museum. Khler juxtaposed their paintings with those of German Gothic masters from the museum collection. Both Feininger and Klee were suprised at how well the modernity of their work harmonized with mystical and spiritual character of the medieval artists. For the latter, nature was observed and depicted as an aspect of reality, but at the same time it held a symbolical dimension: earth was fleeting and temporal, the sky was a vision of eternity. In the present work Feininger's bridge is a translation of a real object into pictorial form, but at the same time it is a symbol which resonates of passage and transfiguration.
The second event was Feininger's renewed interest in music, a passion he shared with Klee, who was an accomplished violinist. Feininger began to compose fugues at his piano and harmonium. "[He] investigated the possibilities of inversion, of mirror effects, of overlapping, and of the interpenetration and synchronization of events. These principles of fugal construction are all used in music to build a temporal order; Feininger applied them to his paintings" (H. Hess, Lyonel Feininger, New York, 1961, p. 98). In Brcke A, the repeated arching forms, the bridge and sky mirrored in the water below, and the oscillating, overlapping contours display an almost musical approach to the translation of nature into abstracted form.