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Lot Essay
Somewhere in Germany, probably just outside Weimar, there is a small town with strange brightly coloured buildings, that enjoys brilliant sunrises and sunsets, and whose inhabitants are all good German burghers. Yet everything in this town is slightly different, slightly askew and life is slightly more-so here than in any other German town. The architecture seems to sway and bend with the prevailing mood of the landscape and the town's predominantly bourgeois inhabitants are all permanently either fermenting revolt or celebrating Carnival. Vaguely caricature-like their flat and slightly comic forms seem to be mimicked by the town's buildings in such a way that it becomes impossible to imagine one without the other. Between 1908 and 1912 Lyonel Feininger painted this town repeatedly in a series of paintings that have come to be known as his "grotesques" and the name he gave to the town was the "city at the end of the world".
Feininger's paintings of the "city at the end of the world" represent one of the first examples of an artist "expressionising" the city - making the form and structure of the town's architecture visually distort in such a way as to suggest a visual echo to the inner passions and emotions of its citizens. Feininger's aim with such distortion was to create a more intense "crystallisation" of reality. "I am dreaming of very different light and tonal effects, very different means of translation than before but it is almost impossible to get away from reality as one is accustomed to seeing it." Feininger wrote around this time. "What one sees must be transformed in the mind and crystallised. I have so much preliminary work to do Not for nothing does one start, a happy old man of 36, to paint and paint with the passion of a locomotive for eight to ten hours a day. But hope is beginning to dawn. If I don't go mad with the sheer joy of life." (Letter of 1907 quoted in Lyonel Feininger, U.Luckhard, Munich, 1989, p.21.)
One of the small towns around Weimar that Feininger frequently visited on his beloved bicycle and which served as a model for his imaginary "city at the end of the world", was Gelmeroda. Its church, which dominates the scene in Carnival in Gelmeroda II, was a place of enormous significance for Feininger - becoming his Mont-Saint Victoire - a subject which he would return to paint time and again throughout the next forty years of his life and which prompted the creation of many of his finest works. Carnival in Gelmeroda II is the earliest surviving painting by Feininger of this church.
Feininger seems to have first visited Gelmeroda in the spring of 1906 while on a visit to his future wife Julia who was then studying in Weimar. He made several sketches of the church on this occasion - sketches which would serve as the starting point for several of his later paintings. In Carnival in Gelmeroda II as in the later 1912 etching In der Stadt am Ende der Welt (In the City at the end of the World), the church at Gelmeroda forms the central character of the composition. Unlike in the etching where Feininger has actually given the church a face - transforming the windows and doors into two eyes and a mouth - in Carnival in Gelmeroda II the church clearly remains simply a building even though its wonderful steeple does deliberately resemble the pointed hats of the carnival goers.
Carnival in Gelmeroda II was painted in 1908 shortly after Feininger's return from a two year visit to Paris. There, under the influence of Matisse and his circle, Feininger's colours developed an expressive intensity which was finally brought to fruition in the works he painted on his return to Berlin in May. This newly developed maturity can be seen in Carnival in Gelmeroda II in the way that Feininger manages to conjure the atmosphere of early evening with only a limited range of simple colours
Carnival in Gelmeroda II is one of Feininger's so-called "inacessible" "East German paintings". Consequently, the history of the painting's provenance also forms an important part of Feininger's life-story. It is listed as No.18 in a group of around 50 important paintings by Feininger that were left in hiding in Germany when he fled the Third Reich in 1937. His work was considered degenerate by the Nazi regime and many of his paintings had been confiscated by the authorities long before Feininger left for New York. In order to protect the finest works in his collection Feininger hid his paintings and on leaving Germany entrusted their safe-keeping to his young friend Hermann Klump.
Hermann Klumpp was a former pupil at the Bauhaus and a regular guest at the Feiningers' house. As early as the spring of 1933, after a house-search from the SA (Storm Troopers), Feininger had moved some of his possessions into storage in Klumpp's father's house. In 1937 the Nazis confiscated some of Feininger's works and Feininger ultimately decided to move to the United States. In January 1938, Feininger requested that Klumpp ship his possessions to the U.S. When the supposed remnants of the collection arrived, Feininger was heard to say, 'He sent me nothing of what I asked for'. Klumpp had sent household goods, but not the fifty paintings Feininger had loved enough to safeguard in storage elsewhere.
In order to avoid the destruction of these works, Klumpp had nobly and convincingly claimed ownership of the art and kept them safe in Nazi Germany. No further requests, formal or informal, were made by the Feiningers for the paintings because Klumpp seemed, quite genuinely, to fear for his life and for that of his wife and two children. Such a shipment would have constituted an admission of guilt regarding Klumpp's well-motivated fraud and perjury. It was under these circumstances that Hans Hess - the co-ordinator of the catalogue for Feininger's work - was briefed when he visited Feininger's wife Julia in the United States. In order to ensure Klumpp's safety they agreed to list the works as 'Inaccessible', in contrast to the other works that had been lost or redistributed during the war (the war ultimately resulted in the change or loss of possession of 348 of the artist's pictures). This manoeuvre ensured Klumpp's safety as well as that of the paintings,- as they were neither certified as the possessions of an alien, nor falsely listed under his name. However, at the end of the war, Klumpp now lived in East Germany and his correspondence became increasingly less satisfactory to the Feininger's, and especially so after Feininger's death in 1956. It appears that he had exerted himself so much in the protection of Feininger's paintings that they had, in his mind, become his.
No further action was taken until after the death of Julia, when the property in theory should have constituted a part of the estate of her heirs. The executors, Ralph F. Colin (the family attorney) and his son, who had known of the existence of these works, set about tactfully arranging for their restitution. Initially, if Klumpp had agreed to some form of compromise, all would have been well, and he would have been compensated in some form for his efforts. Instead, Klumpp reacted with a long legal letter in which he claimed ownership of the works, although he thought himself generous and added insult to injury by agreeing that the Feininger Estate had intellectual title to the pictures and should therefore be entitled to half of any reproduction fees.
In 1976, Colin took Klumpp to court and secured title of the works for the Feininger Estate. However, this added to the problems because the GDR then asserted their authority and therefore possession over the paintings, being the property of an alien. Diplomatic efforts were made for years by Colin, culminating in a suit against the East German government, aided by a mirror image case happening concurrently, in which the East Germans were trying to reclaim two Drer paintings then in private hands in the U.S. This strategy worked, and the East Germans returned the works to the States, where, in 1985, all 49 paintings were exhibited for the first time in over fifty years at the Exhibition Lyonel Feininger at the Acquavella Galleries, New York and at the Phillips Collection,Washington, D.C.
Feininger's paintings of the "city at the end of the world" represent one of the first examples of an artist "expressionising" the city - making the form and structure of the town's architecture visually distort in such a way as to suggest a visual echo to the inner passions and emotions of its citizens. Feininger's aim with such distortion was to create a more intense "crystallisation" of reality. "I am dreaming of very different light and tonal effects, very different means of translation than before but it is almost impossible to get away from reality as one is accustomed to seeing it." Feininger wrote around this time. "What one sees must be transformed in the mind and crystallised. I have so much preliminary work to do Not for nothing does one start, a happy old man of 36, to paint and paint with the passion of a locomotive for eight to ten hours a day. But hope is beginning to dawn. If I don't go mad with the sheer joy of life." (Letter of 1907 quoted in Lyonel Feininger, U.Luckhard, Munich, 1989, p.21.)
One of the small towns around Weimar that Feininger frequently visited on his beloved bicycle and which served as a model for his imaginary "city at the end of the world", was Gelmeroda. Its church, which dominates the scene in Carnival in Gelmeroda II, was a place of enormous significance for Feininger - becoming his Mont-Saint Victoire - a subject which he would return to paint time and again throughout the next forty years of his life and which prompted the creation of many of his finest works. Carnival in Gelmeroda II is the earliest surviving painting by Feininger of this church.
Feininger seems to have first visited Gelmeroda in the spring of 1906 while on a visit to his future wife Julia who was then studying in Weimar. He made several sketches of the church on this occasion - sketches which would serve as the starting point for several of his later paintings. In Carnival in Gelmeroda II as in the later 1912 etching In der Stadt am Ende der Welt (In the City at the end of the World), the church at Gelmeroda forms the central character of the composition. Unlike in the etching where Feininger has actually given the church a face - transforming the windows and doors into two eyes and a mouth - in Carnival in Gelmeroda II the church clearly remains simply a building even though its wonderful steeple does deliberately resemble the pointed hats of the carnival goers.
Carnival in Gelmeroda II was painted in 1908 shortly after Feininger's return from a two year visit to Paris. There, under the influence of Matisse and his circle, Feininger's colours developed an expressive intensity which was finally brought to fruition in the works he painted on his return to Berlin in May. This newly developed maturity can be seen in Carnival in Gelmeroda II in the way that Feininger manages to conjure the atmosphere of early evening with only a limited range of simple colours
Carnival in Gelmeroda II is one of Feininger's so-called "inacessible" "East German paintings". Consequently, the history of the painting's provenance also forms an important part of Feininger's life-story. It is listed as No.18 in a group of around 50 important paintings by Feininger that were left in hiding in Germany when he fled the Third Reich in 1937. His work was considered degenerate by the Nazi regime and many of his paintings had been confiscated by the authorities long before Feininger left for New York. In order to protect the finest works in his collection Feininger hid his paintings and on leaving Germany entrusted their safe-keeping to his young friend Hermann Klump.
Hermann Klumpp was a former pupil at the Bauhaus and a regular guest at the Feiningers' house. As early as the spring of 1933, after a house-search from the SA (Storm Troopers), Feininger had moved some of his possessions into storage in Klumpp's father's house. In 1937 the Nazis confiscated some of Feininger's works and Feininger ultimately decided to move to the United States. In January 1938, Feininger requested that Klumpp ship his possessions to the U.S. When the supposed remnants of the collection arrived, Feininger was heard to say, 'He sent me nothing of what I asked for'. Klumpp had sent household goods, but not the fifty paintings Feininger had loved enough to safeguard in storage elsewhere.
In order to avoid the destruction of these works, Klumpp had nobly and convincingly claimed ownership of the art and kept them safe in Nazi Germany. No further requests, formal or informal, were made by the Feiningers for the paintings because Klumpp seemed, quite genuinely, to fear for his life and for that of his wife and two children. Such a shipment would have constituted an admission of guilt regarding Klumpp's well-motivated fraud and perjury. It was under these circumstances that Hans Hess - the co-ordinator of the catalogue for Feininger's work - was briefed when he visited Feininger's wife Julia in the United States. In order to ensure Klumpp's safety they agreed to list the works as 'Inaccessible', in contrast to the other works that had been lost or redistributed during the war (the war ultimately resulted in the change or loss of possession of 348 of the artist's pictures). This manoeuvre ensured Klumpp's safety as well as that of the paintings,- as they were neither certified as the possessions of an alien, nor falsely listed under his name. However, at the end of the war, Klumpp now lived in East Germany and his correspondence became increasingly less satisfactory to the Feininger's, and especially so after Feininger's death in 1956. It appears that he had exerted himself so much in the protection of Feininger's paintings that they had, in his mind, become his.
No further action was taken until after the death of Julia, when the property in theory should have constituted a part of the estate of her heirs. The executors, Ralph F. Colin (the family attorney) and his son, who had known of the existence of these works, set about tactfully arranging for their restitution. Initially, if Klumpp had agreed to some form of compromise, all would have been well, and he would have been compensated in some form for his efforts. Instead, Klumpp reacted with a long legal letter in which he claimed ownership of the works, although he thought himself generous and added insult to injury by agreeing that the Feininger Estate had intellectual title to the pictures and should therefore be entitled to half of any reproduction fees.
In 1976, Colin took Klumpp to court and secured title of the works for the Feininger Estate. However, this added to the problems because the GDR then asserted their authority and therefore possession over the paintings, being the property of an alien. Diplomatic efforts were made for years by Colin, culminating in a suit against the East German government, aided by a mirror image case happening concurrently, in which the East Germans were trying to reclaim two Drer paintings then in private hands in the U.S. This strategy worked, and the East Germans returned the works to the States, where, in 1985, all 49 paintings were exhibited for the first time in over fifty years at the Exhibition Lyonel Feininger at the Acquavella Galleries, New York and at the Phillips Collection,Washington, D.C.