.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Achim Moeller has confirmed the authenticity of this work.
In June 1937, after four decades in Europe, Feininger moved back to America. His decision to leave Germany, where the progressive worsening of the political situation had deeply affected his creativity, was inspired by his most recent stay in New York and California in late 1936. The first years in the United States were not easy, although he found great support from the New York art dealer Curt Valentin, and from William R. Valentiner, an old friend from the Novembergruppe in Germany in 1919, and now the Director of the Detroit Institute of Arts.
In his struggle to overcome the difficulties of the emigration, Feininger returned to the sources of his early inspiration--the representation of ships and boats. The turning point for the development of his late production came in 1938, with Feininger's extensive work for the mural for the Marine Transportation Building at the New York World's Fair--a commission that Valentiner helped him to secure. Having conceived the mural as a summation of his work to date, he was able to reflect upon his career with an unprecedented lucidity. Feininger completed a number of preliminary studies like the present lot and these are now all that remain as the completed mural is no longer in existence.
The commission of Feininger for the mural for the Marine Transportation Building highlighted Feininger's lifelong fascination with ships and harbors, inspired by his childhood spent playing by the shores of the Hudson and the East river, and, of course, fueled by his trips between America and Europe. In a letter written in 1937, Feininger recalled: "the waterfront of Manhattan was a magnificent spectacle: tall ships, forests of masts and yards, long slanting-up bowsprits, reaching from above fantastic figureheads right across West Street almost to the building opposite, stood side by side for many hundreds of yards along the shore. The Hudson, the East River, each crawled with sailing sloops, schooners, brigs, ships and paddlewheel steamers" (letter to Theodore Spicer-Simpson, H. Hess, Lyonel Feininger, London, 1961, pp. 2-3).
In June 1937, after four decades in Europe, Feininger moved back to America. His decision to leave Germany, where the progressive worsening of the political situation had deeply affected his creativity, was inspired by his most recent stay in New York and California in late 1936. The first years in the United States were not easy, although he found great support from the New York art dealer Curt Valentin, and from William R. Valentiner, an old friend from the Novembergruppe in Germany in 1919, and now the Director of the Detroit Institute of Arts.
In his struggle to overcome the difficulties of the emigration, Feininger returned to the sources of his early inspiration--the representation of ships and boats. The turning point for the development of his late production came in 1938, with Feininger's extensive work for the mural for the Marine Transportation Building at the New York World's Fair--a commission that Valentiner helped him to secure. Having conceived the mural as a summation of his work to date, he was able to reflect upon his career with an unprecedented lucidity. Feininger completed a number of preliminary studies like the present lot and these are now all that remain as the completed mural is no longer in existence.
The commission of Feininger for the mural for the Marine Transportation Building highlighted Feininger's lifelong fascination with ships and harbors, inspired by his childhood spent playing by the shores of the Hudson and the East river, and, of course, fueled by his trips between America and Europe. In a letter written in 1937, Feininger recalled: "the waterfront of Manhattan was a magnificent spectacle: tall ships, forests of masts and yards, long slanting-up bowsprits, reaching from above fantastic figureheads right across West Street almost to the building opposite, stood side by side for many hundreds of yards along the shore. The Hudson, the East River, each crawled with sailing sloops, schooners, brigs, ships and paddlewheel steamers" (letter to Theodore Spicer-Simpson, H. Hess, Lyonel Feininger, London, 1961, pp. 2-3).