Lyonel Feininger
Landstraße
1923
Watercolour and pen and India ink drawing on fibrous paper 24.6 x 35.1/35.5 cm Framed under glass. Signed, dated, and titled 'Feininger Landstraße 24. Sept. 23' in India ink in lower margin. - Overall browned. Three professionally closed short marginal tears.
In mid-April of 1922 Lyonel Feininger spent several days in Neubrandenburg. There, on 16 April, the artist created his first pencil study of the motif of a tree-lined country lane, which he entitled “Chaussee bei Neubrandenburg” at a later point in time (now at the Harvard Art Museum/Busch-Reisinger Museum). On 21 September 1923 Feininger developed this motif into an ink and watercolour-wash drawing, which defines the background in more detail. Three days later he created the final version presented here. It depicts an energised web of intersecting vertical, horizontal and diagonal lines that invest what is actually a simple landscape motif with a powerful dynamism.
Certificate
Achim Moeller, Director of the Lyonel Feininger Project LLC, New York – Berlin, has confirmed the authenticity of this work with a photo-certificate dated 25 March 2020. It is registered in the archive of the Lyonel Feininger Project under the number 1648-03-25-20.
Provenance
Private collection, North Rhine-Westphalia/USA; in family possession since
Exhibitions
Cologne 1957 (Kölnischer Kunstverein), Malerei des 20. Jahrhunderts in Kölner Privatbesitz, cat. no. 26