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1871-1956
NORMANNISCHES DORF I (NORMAN VILLAGE I)

measurements
80 by 100cm

alternate measurements
31 1/2 by 39 1/2 in.

Painted in 1918.

signed Feiningerand dated 1918 (lower right)

oil on canvas

PROVENANCE

Dr. Franz Kantorowicz, Berlin-Steglitz and Stockton, California (1928)
Justin K. Thannhauser, New York (on consignment from the above)
Private European Collection (acquired from the above on 17th February 1950; sale: Sotheby's, New York, 6th May 2004, lot 102)
Purchased at the above sale by the present owner

EXHIBITED

Berlin, Nationalgalerie, Neuere Deutsche Kunst aus Berliner Privatbesitz, 1928 (titled Niedergrunstedt)
Berlin, Nationalgalerie, Lyonel Feininger, 1931, no. 53
San Francisco, Museum of Art, 1941 (on loan, titled Roofs)
Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum, Lyonel Feininger, 1954-55, no, 5a (titled Danken)
Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum, De Renaissance der XXe Eeuw, 1958, no. 104
San Francisco, Museum of Art; Minneapolis, Institute of Arts; The Cleveland Museum of Art; Buffalo, Albright Art Gallery and Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Lyonel Feininger Memorial Exhibition, 1959-60, no. 14
Hamburg, Kunstverein; Essen, Folkwang Museum and Baden-Baden, Staatliche Kunsthalle, Lyonel Feininger 1871-1956, Gedächtnisausstellung, 1961, no. 15
Strasbourg, Ancienne Douane, L'Art en Europe Autour de 1918, 1968, no. 63
Munich, Haus der Kunst and Zurich, Kunsthaus, Lyonel Feininger, 1973, no. 93, illustrated in colour in the catalogue
Zürich, Galerie Lopes, 1989

LITERATURE

Hans Hess, Lyonel Feininger, London, 1961, no. 190, illustrated p. 265
Ulrich Luckhardt, Lyonel Feininger, Munich, 1989, discussed p. 110

NOTE

At the end of World War I, artists in Germany attempted to rebuild the cultural life of the republic, hoping to reignite the creativity that had flourished at the beginning of the decade. In 1918, painters, writers and architects from all over the country formed organizations, such as Novembergruppe in Berlin and the Arbeitsrat für Kunst, that promoted specific social and cultural agendas. Among the members of both of these groups was Lyonel Feininger, whose successful one -man exhibition in 1917 at the Galerie Der Sturm had established his reputation as an artist of important cultural standing in Germany. But Feininger was wary of ideological groups and largely worked on his own during this time, never compromising his commitment to individual artistic expression. "Not for nothing did I become a painter, the ultimate means of expressing myself," he wrote around the time he painted the present work. "[A]nd I must admit I am a painter who torments himself unreasonably, a man who fails a hundred times. In the quiet of my studio I wage despairing battles; daily I arise to new struggles, inspired by hope, only to despair again in the evening... Now only the vale is left to me, only willpower; perhaps I have not a single one of the gifts of the modern 'painterly,' 'amusing' creative artist... The church, the mill, the bridge, the house - and the graveyard - have all inspired me with deep feeling since childhood. They are all symbolic. But it is only since the war that I have realised why I feel this compulsion to keep representing them in pictures" (reprinted in Ulrich Luckhardt, Lyonel Feininger , Munich, 1989, pp. 35-36).

The present work is one of only eight known canvases, including one that is currently at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., that Feininger completed in 1918. Painting supplies were expensive and difficult to obtain at the end of the war, and the artist's primary medium that year was woodcut, an inexpensive alternative that enabled him to put his skills as a draftsman to good use. Feininger's focus on new media and his emphasis on draftsmanship is apparent in the oils that he completed in 1918, including this painting. Here, he depicts a village with a precision and stylistic confidence that could only be achieved by an expert draftsman. Angles intersecting and overlapping add depth and dimension to the composition, and, in spite of the abstraction that he achieves with this technique, Feininger is able to preserve the legibility of the scene. His confidence in his craft is most clearly expressed in the manner in which he executes the architectural features of buildings; the slope of the eaves and the sharpness of the corners are exaggerated, dramatically heightening the importance of line as a structural device in this picture. Feininger returned to this subject again in 1920, creating a related composition titled Normannisches Dorf II, now in the Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart. According to Ulrich Luckhardt, "The two compositions are almost identical, differing only in the colouring. The design presumably derives from a sketch made in September 1906 during a visit to Normandy from Paris; houses are arranged in a row, one behind the other, on a gentle slope" (Ulrich Luckhardt, Lyonel Feininger, Munich, 1989, p. 110).

Many of the compositions that Feininger completed in 1918, both in woodcut and in oil, focused on the beauty of architecture. Through his involvement with the Arbeitsrat für Kunst, the artist made the acquaintance of Walter Gropius, the founder of a new international design school called Bauhaus. Gropius's influence as an architect made its mark on Feininger's compositions of this period, which were characterised by a clarity and monumentality of form that is so perfectly expressed by the present work. In 1919, Feininger was selected by Gropius to be the head of the graphic workshop at the Bauhaus, and designed the first cover of the Bauhaus manifesto.

Concerning his pictures from this era, Feininger wrote: "Each individual work serves as an expression of our most personal state of mind at that particular moment and of the inescapable, imperative need for release by means of an appropriate act of creation: in the rhythm, form and colour and mood of a picture" (quoted in Wolf-Dieter Dube, Expressionism, New York, 1973, p. 172).