|
 |
LYONEL FEININGER
New York 1871 - 1956 New York |
BIOGRAPHY
|
FURTHER WORKS
|
| |
PULU´S EASTER EGG, 1952
Oil on canvas, 40.5 x 25.3 cm
Verso: signed and dated: Feininger 52
Titled on the stretcher bar with pencil: Pulu’s Easter Egg 1952
Provenance: Julia Feininger collection, New York. – Marlborough Fine Art, London. – Marlborough Galleria d’Arte, Rome. – private collection Switzerland.
Exhibitions: Lyonel Feininger, Marlborough Galleria d’Arte, Rome 1971. – Lyonel Feininger: Dipinti, Acquarelli, Disegni, Galleria del Milione, Milan 1972, no. 13.
The painting will be included in the catalogue raisonné (vol. 3) of Lyonel Feininger’s paintings (1871–1956), which is currently being compiled by Achim Moeller. |
BACK |
| |
|
Feininger had an ambivalent relationship with New York, the city where he was born and lived from 1937 until the end of his life. As a child the ships and locomotives had provided him with a wealth of ideas, but he was at first uninspired by what he saw on his return. Gradually he discovered the city for himself and finally, on 3 February 1942, he wrote to his friend, the art historian Alois Schardt (1889–1955): ‘New York is the most amazing city in its atmosphere, color and contrasts in the whole world. Alone the magnificent and daring uplift of its high buildings is unique. Not to speak of the light.’1
The fascinating verticality of New York, the city where views of the sky are often framed by soaring skyscrapers, emerges in Feininger’s painting Pulu’s Easter Egg. Black and grey tower blocks rise up on the left and right, opening up a view of the night sky that shimmers in yellowish green with the yellow moon shining in the centre. The buildings have angular, stringent forms and contrast with the loose design of the sky. Pulu’s Easter Egg stands out due to its bold abstract quality, a characteristic of Feininger’s late work, and it clearly conveys how Feininger expressed his introspective approach to Manhattan’s motifs in compositions that dissolved skyscrapers in atmosphere.2 In this painting, which he gave to his wife Julia, whose pet name was Pulu, Feininger succeeded in achieving what he had first set his sights on when exploring the subject of Manhattan: ‘... to achieve what others take no notice of, in other words without “symbolism” but with structure and permeation, abstract dematerialization, and removing all traces of narrative.’3
Text from the Lyonel Feininger Project LLC c/o Achim Moeller, New York – Berlin
1 Lyonel Feininger Project LLC archives, New York
2 See Hans Hess, Lyonel Feininger, p. 154
3 Lyonel Feininger to Alois Schardt, New York, 8 November 1940, Lyonel Feininger Project LLC archives, New York
Literature: Hans Hess: Lyonel Feininger. W. Kohlhammer Verlag. Stuttgart 1959, ill. p. 299, no. 516. |
|
|
