PRESS RELEASE
Brush & Lens: The Feininger Family Legacy
May 5 – May 28, 2006
A world-class exhibition featuring original paintings and works on paper by Lyonel Feininger and over 40 historical photographs by Andreas Feininger from the archives of LIFE Magazine.
CLEVELAND – The Contessa Gallery announces today the upcoming opening of an exclusive exhibition covering nearly 120 years of work by the Feininger family. It will mark the 50th Anniversary of Lyonel Feininger’s death, as well as the 100th Anniversary of Andreas Feininger’s birth.
The father and son each made a great contribution to 20th century art. Lyonel Feininger (1871–1956) was a painter, illustrator, superb caricaturist and printmaker. He was loved for his lighthearted subject matter, known for clean, crystalline abstract seascapes and powerful urban scenes. His bold and expressive designs follow in the footsteps of the great Germanic woodcutting tradition.
Lyonel started his career as a cartoonist in 1894. He worked for a number of German, French and American magazines, and did illustrations for two comic strips for the Chicago Tribune. After a few months he left and went on to become a highly celebrated painter and artist.
Lyonel was deeply influenced by the Futurists and adopted prismatic style, with facets that are forming three-dimensional objects. He was named Form Master and became one of the founders of the legendary Bauhaus school of art and architecture at Weimar and a member of the American Abstract Artists group. His works can be found in galleries and museums worldwide: Fine Arts Museum (San Francisco), Museum of Fine Arts (Boston), Museum of Modern Art (New York City), National Galleries of Scotland (Edinburgh), Stadel Museum (Frankfurt), Bauhaus – Archiv Museum of Design (Berlin) etc.
His son Andreas Feininger (1906-1999) was an American photographer, born in Paris, but educated as an architect in Germany. Very quickly Andreas discovered his talent for “portraying the world more graphic than reality itself” with the help of his camera. Andreas served as a staff photographer of LIFE magazine and became most famous for his photographs of New York. “I see the city as a living organism: dynamic, sometimes violent, and even brutal”, he stated. His prolific career at LIFE resulted in completion of more than 430 assignments in a twenty year span, with many images becoming some of the most iconic images of the 20th century.
In the introduction to one of Feininger’s books on photography, Ralph Hattersley described him as “one of the great architects who helped create photography as we know it today.” In 1966 the American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP) awarded Feininger their highest distinction, the Robert Leavitt Award. In 1991, the International Center of Photography awarded Feininger the Infinity Lifetime Achievement Award.
Today, Feininger’s photographs are in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Gallery of Art, London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, and the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York.
Although both artists worked in completely different art mediums, the show highlights some strong similarities in style as both concentrated heavily on urban scapes, and had a highly architectural point of view.
The exhibition will include numerous works by Lyonel Feininger and over 40 famous photographs by Andreas Feininger, including 20 rare one-of-a-kind vintage photographs. It will include images and price ranges that will appeal to the most serious collector, as well as, the first-time collector. This collection will allow people to own an important piece of history.