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Lot Essay
'I am anticipating getting off to dear little Weimar on April 1st, where I intend to work out of doors, until October. This year is a critical one in my career, I expect to produce very important works' (Lyonel Feininger, letter to Alfred Vance Churchill dated 13 March 1913, cited in E. Scheyer, Lyonel Feininger: Caricature and Fantasy, Detroit, 1964, p. 169.)
Executed during Feininger's six month stay in Weimar in the summer of 1913, Auf der Brücke belongs to the breakthrough period in Feininger's art when the artist first began to fuse the representation of the world he saw around him with the tremulous rhythm of his inner visions. 'This is probably the first period of maturity in my life as an artist', Feininger wrote to his wife Julia who had stayed in Berlin. 'Only in drawing had I been capable of such intensity Steigerung. Recently, when working out of doors during the last days, I became quite ecstatic; by the end of the afternoon I had become pure instinct and ability. I stood in one place and drew the same motif three or four times until I grasped it according to my vision' (Letter to Julia 18 May 1913, cited in Hess, Lyonel Feininger, New York, 1974, p. 72).
The old stone bridge over the river Ilm in Ober-Weimar had first been brought to Feininger's attention by his wife Julia on their first visit to the city in 1906. Along with the churches of Gelmeroda and Vollersroda, it was to become a favoured subject that Feininger repeatedly painted during his many working visits to the city. Thrilled with the new progress in his work during this prolonged stay in 1913, Feininger wrote to Julia marvelling: 'Weimar has always been and always will be the town of the miracle of my life.' Thinking back over the last few years of his painterly struggle to conquer Nature and create an art that expressed something of his inner self, he observed, 'How difficult it was to bring my inner life into harmony with my mode of creation.' But now he realised that his art was finally breaking new ground and had come to a point of resolution. As he had observed to Alfred Vance Churchill before setting off to Weimar in March, his painting had reached a point where, 'with each new picture I make giant strides. Since the Fall (of) 1912 it seems to all acquainted or interested in my work, scarcely credible - but I am building upon a foundation to endure, and am very sure, now, that I am following the only possible lines for my development' (op. cit., p. 167).
During the six months of his stay in Weimar in 1913 Feininger painted the bridge over the Ilm three times on three separate occasions and in three very different ways. Such was Feininger's vigour and enthusiasm for his work at this time that each of these three important paintings signified a completely new departure.
Feininger had for a long time been fascinated by the architectural structure of this bridge because with its high arches, grandiose design yet miniature scale it seemed to him to compress a sense of the monumental into a very small space. In each of the 1913 paintings Feininger has allowed the intuitive feelings he held towards the dramatic architecture of the bridge to be expressed by exaggerating and extending the angularity of the bridge's stone structure in such a way as to transform it into a seemingly living entity. In this way, in the same way as with the cathedrals of Gelmeroda and Vollersroda, the bridge over the Ilm becomes a dramatic architectonic expression of the excited mental state of the artist.
Auf der Brücke is one of the freest and most expressionistic of the paintings Feininger made in Weimar at this time. Using a series of bold angular forms filled with free gestural strokes of subdued colour Feininger has created a powerful semi-abstract composition that, like many of Kandinsky's paintings of the period, makes powerful use of its square format.
Concentrating on the pathway on the top of the bridge and using an exaggerated perspective that expands extensively to fill the whole lower edge of the picture frame, Feininger manipulates the unique angularity of the bridge to create a striking composition filled with tension and instability. From the dark trees and the broad flat walls of the houses to the triangular supports on the bridge and the figures of the two Jesuits walking over it, every element in the picture leans out and away from the dark central pathway of the bridge. This creates a sense of explosive energy similar to that established in the apocalyptic cityscapes of Ludwig Meidner. In the present work, however, the feverish energy of these contrasting angles is restrained and held down by the pictorial weight of the dark central path anchoring these various tensions and holding them together into an expressive, cohesive unity.
Executed during Feininger's six month stay in Weimar in the summer of 1913, Auf der Brücke belongs to the breakthrough period in Feininger's art when the artist first began to fuse the representation of the world he saw around him with the tremulous rhythm of his inner visions. 'This is probably the first period of maturity in my life as an artist', Feininger wrote to his wife Julia who had stayed in Berlin. 'Only in drawing had I been capable of such intensity Steigerung. Recently, when working out of doors during the last days, I became quite ecstatic; by the end of the afternoon I had become pure instinct and ability. I stood in one place and drew the same motif three or four times until I grasped it according to my vision' (Letter to Julia 18 May 1913, cited in Hess, Lyonel Feininger, New York, 1974, p. 72).
The old stone bridge over the river Ilm in Ober-Weimar had first been brought to Feininger's attention by his wife Julia on their first visit to the city in 1906. Along with the churches of Gelmeroda and Vollersroda, it was to become a favoured subject that Feininger repeatedly painted during his many working visits to the city. Thrilled with the new progress in his work during this prolonged stay in 1913, Feininger wrote to Julia marvelling: 'Weimar has always been and always will be the town of the miracle of my life.' Thinking back over the last few years of his painterly struggle to conquer Nature and create an art that expressed something of his inner self, he observed, 'How difficult it was to bring my inner life into harmony with my mode of creation.' But now he realised that his art was finally breaking new ground and had come to a point of resolution. As he had observed to Alfred Vance Churchill before setting off to Weimar in March, his painting had reached a point where, 'with each new picture I make giant strides. Since the Fall (of) 1912 it seems to all acquainted or interested in my work, scarcely credible - but I am building upon a foundation to endure, and am very sure, now, that I am following the only possible lines for my development' (op. cit., p. 167).
During the six months of his stay in Weimar in 1913 Feininger painted the bridge over the Ilm three times on three separate occasions and in three very different ways. Such was Feininger's vigour and enthusiasm for his work at this time that each of these three important paintings signified a completely new departure.
Feininger had for a long time been fascinated by the architectural structure of this bridge because with its high arches, grandiose design yet miniature scale it seemed to him to compress a sense of the monumental into a very small space. In each of the 1913 paintings Feininger has allowed the intuitive feelings he held towards the dramatic architecture of the bridge to be expressed by exaggerating and extending the angularity of the bridge's stone structure in such a way as to transform it into a seemingly living entity. In this way, in the same way as with the cathedrals of Gelmeroda and Vollersroda, the bridge over the Ilm becomes a dramatic architectonic expression of the excited mental state of the artist.
Auf der Brücke is one of the freest and most expressionistic of the paintings Feininger made in Weimar at this time. Using a series of bold angular forms filled with free gestural strokes of subdued colour Feininger has created a powerful semi-abstract composition that, like many of Kandinsky's paintings of the period, makes powerful use of its square format.
Concentrating on the pathway on the top of the bridge and using an exaggerated perspective that expands extensively to fill the whole lower edge of the picture frame, Feininger manipulates the unique angularity of the bridge to create a striking composition filled with tension and instability. From the dark trees and the broad flat walls of the houses to the triangular supports on the bridge and the figures of the two Jesuits walking over it, every element in the picture leans out and away from the dark central pathway of the bridge. This creates a sense of explosive energy similar to that established in the apocalyptic cityscapes of Ludwig Meidner. In the present work, however, the feverish energy of these contrasting angles is restrained and held down by the pictorial weight of the dark central path anchoring these various tensions and holding them together into an expressive, cohesive unity.