Drawing and architecture in the work of Lyonel Feininger: from cubist prismism to spiritual abstraction

Abstract

This article pays homage to the German-American painter and teacher Lyonel Feininger, one of the great masters of the Bauhaus, upon the hundredth anniversary of his first solo exhibition in Berlin in 1917. Feininger was an independent and very versatile artist. He was a great cultivator of drawing as the beginning and the end of his work, especially when it came to sketching in situ. He mastered a multitude of graphic and pictorial techniques, including comics, cartoons, engravings, charcoals, watercolours, oils and modelling. He drew on numerous avant-garde movements, from expressionism to abstraction, cubism and orphism, and this culminated in his own “prismism,” though he never became fully linked with any movement in particular. What made him stand out during his lifetime was his visual evolution and a very personal spiritual quest, which this text provides an account of.

Keywords

• lyonel feininger
• dibujo de arquitectura
• vanguardias
• cubismo
• bahuaus