Julia Feininger

Julia (Julie) Feininger , nee Lilienfeld, divorced Berg (born November 23, 1880 in Berlin ; died August 7, 1970 in Syosset ( New York City )) was a German - American artist, student at the Bauhaus and publicist . Julia Feininger was the second wife of the German-American painter Lyonel Feininger and mother of the photographers Andreas Feininger and Theodore Lux Feininger as well as the musicologist Laurence Feininger . In 1937 Julia and Lyonel Feininger emigrated to the United States and lived and worked in New York.

life and work

Julia Lilienfeld began her artistic training in 1900 in the Association of Artists and Art Friends in Berlin . In 1903 she married the doctor Walter Berg. In order to perfect her painting technique, she began in 1905 at the Grand Ducal Saxon Art School in Weimar to study graphic techniques. In July 1905, while on vacation in the Baltic Sea, she met the cartoonist Lyonel Feininger, who was married to Clara Fürst at the time. After the vacation, Lyonel Feininger and Julia Berg separated from their spouses and divorced . While Julia Berg was continuing her studies in Weimar, she visited Feininger in February 1906 and made numerous natural sketches in the Weimar area, which would later largely determine his artistic work. Julia Berg encouraged Feininger to give up his caricaturist career and to turn to graphic arts techniques. Feininger's first paintings were created in 1907.

Portrait of Julia Feininger (1926)
Lucia Moholy ,
b / w photography
37.2 cm x 27.9 cm cm
Art Institute Chicago Link to the picture (please note copyrights )

In July 1906 she traveled with Feininger to Paris , where they both published drawings in the magazine Le Témoin . At the end of December 1906, their son Andreas was born in Paris . In the following year, works by Julia Berg were published in the magazine Das Schnauferl in addition to Feininger's drawings. In 1908 the family moved to Berlin and the couple married in London on September 25, 1908 . The sons Laurence and Theodore Lux were born in 1909 and 1910. In April 1912 Julia Feininger took part in the exhibition of modern cut silhouettes in the Hohenzollern Kunstgewerbehaus in Berlin with some works .

Portrait of Julia Feininger (1922)
Otto Dix ,
Pencil and watercolor
49.5 cm × 36.2 cm cm
Link to the picture (please note copyrights )

After the appointment of Lyonel Feininger by Walter Gropius as the first master at the Bauhaus , the family moved to Weimar in 1919. From March 30, 1920 (retroactively from October 1, 1919) Julie [sic] Feininger was enrolled as a full-time student at the State Bauhaus in her husband's class. In 1922 the painter Otto Dix portrayed the artist. At the Bauhaus stage workshop, Julie Feininger a. a. Dolls , like 1925 for the fairy tale from the Orient . The seven dolls were given to the Bauhaus Museum Weimar by Theodore Lux Feininger and have been part of the newly designed permanent exhibition in the Bauhaus Museum since 2019.

After the Bauhaus in Weimar was closed, Julia and Lyonel Feininger moved to Dessau with their children on July 30, 1926 . Julia Feininger took American citizenship in 1927 . In Dessau, Julia and Lyonel Feiniger became friends with the lawyer and Bauhaus member Hermann Klumpp . After the Bauhaus in Dessau was closed, the Feininger couple moved to live with friends in Berlin in the spring of 1933. From 1934 Julia and Lyonel Feininger lived in Berlin-Siemensstadt. In May 1936, Julia accompanied her husband on a trip to America, where he held a summer course at Mills College . At the end of 1936 they returned to Berlin via Stockholm and Hamburg .

Because of her Jewish religious affiliation, Julia Feininger and her husband were forced to emigrate from National Socialist Germany on June 11, 1937 . They traveled to New York on the Manhattan ocean liner . Before they fled, the couple entrusted a large part of Lyonel Feininger's paintings to Hermann Klumpp. Julia Feininger, together with Klumpp and the photographer Artur Seeliger , illegally transported them to Quedlinburg on October 21, 1935, shortly before the images that were stored in Moritzburg were confiscated . In contrast to Feininger's works, which were defamed as " Degenerate Art " by the National Socialists a short time later , these paintings by Lyonel Feininger were saved.

Feininger worked as a freelance painter in New York. Julie Feininger published in New York together with her husband, u. a. Monographs on Paul Klee , Wassily Kandinsky and Mark Tobey . After the death of Lyonel Feininger, she prepared the catalog raisonné of her husband's paintings for various publications and took part in the conception of various exhibitions.

She lived and worked in New York until her death. Julie Feininger died on August 7, 1970 after a long illness in Syosset Hospital. It was next to her husband at Mount Hope Cemetery in Hastings-on-Hudson ( Westchester County buried, New York).

reception

In 2019 the Lyonel Feininger Gallery in Quedlinburg dedicated the special exhibition The Feiningers. A family picture at the Bauhaus of the artistic development of the Feininger family. One part of the exhibition is the representation of the influence of Julia Berg / Feininger on the artistic development of Lyonel Feninger. Numerous works of art, u. a. Drawings, collages and some oil paintings by Julia Feininger were juxtaposed with Lyonel Feininger's paintings, which were created at the same time.

Literature by Julia Feininger (selection)

• Paul Klee , New York 1946 (together with Lyonel Feininger)
• Perception and Trus t, 1946 (together with Lyonel Feininger)
• Wassilij Kandinsky , 1947 (together with Lyonel Feininger)
• Mark Tobey , 1961, Basel (together with Lyonel Feininger)

Literature about Julia Feininger

• Letters to Julia Feininger 1905–1935 , New York 1946
• Letters to Julia Feininger 1910–1929 , Amsterdam 1954/55

Individual evidence

1. ^ Hajo Düchting, Rainer K. Wick: Seemanns Bauhaus Lexicon . Seemann, Leipzig 2009, ISBN 978-3-86502-203-5 , pp. 120 .
2. ↑ ^{a b} The Feiningers. A family picture at the Bauhaus; May 25 to September 2, 2019. Lyonel-Feininger Galerie Quedlinburg, May 8, 2019, accessed on October 25, 2019 . 
3. ^ Catalog of the exhibition of modern cut silhouettes, April 1912 . Friedemann and Weber, Berlin 1912.
4. ↑ Volker Wahl, Ute Ackermann (Ed.): The Master Council Protocols of the State Bauhaus Weimer 1919 to 1925 . Springer, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-476-03186-0 , pp. 72 .
5. ↑ DFG-Viewer: Pupils at the Grand Ducal Saxon University of Fine Arts and at the State Bauhaus Weimar. Retrieved October 26, 2019 . 
6. ↑ Ute Ackermann; Ulrike Bestgen: Bauhaus Museum Weimar: The Bauhaus comes from Weimar . Ed .: Klassik Stiftung Weimar. 1st edition. Hirmer, Munich, ISBN 978-3-7774-3272-4 , pp. 76 f .
7. ↑ Wolfgang Büche, Norbert Eisold, Andreas Hüneke: Lyonel Feininger, sailing ship with a blue angler: the Quedlinburg collection of Dr. Hermann Klumpp, graphics, drawing, painting 1906-1937; [on the occasion of the exhibition Lyonel Feininger - Sailing Ship with Blue Angler. The Quedlinburg Collection Dr. Hermann Klumpp, graphics, drawing, painting 1906-1937, April 8 to July 23, 2006] . Lyonel Feininger Gallery, Quedlinburg 2006, ISBN 978-3-86105-128-2 , p. 140 .
8. ↑ Guy Stern, Julia Schöll: Gender. Exile. Writing . Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2002, ISBN 3-8260-2360-9 , p. 70 .
9. ↑ Wolfgang Büche, Norbert Eisold, Andreas Hüneke: Lyonel Feininger, sailing ship with a blue angler: the Quedlinburg collection of Dr. Hermann Klumpp, graphics, drawing, painting 1906-1937; [on the occasion of the exhibition Lyonel Feininger - Sailing Ship with Blue Angler. The Quedlinburg Collection Dr. Hermann Klumpp, graphics, drawing, painting 1906-1937, April 8 to July 23, 2006] . Lyonel Feininger Gallery, Quedlinburg 2006, ISBN 978-3-86105-128-2 , p. 8 .
10. ↑ Mrs. Lyonel Feininger Dies; Widow of the Artist Was 89 . In: The New York Times . August 8, 1970, ISSN  0362-4331 ( nytimes.com [accessed September 23, 2019]).
11. ^ Mdr.de: Exhibition: "The Feiningers" in Quedlinburg - A terribly talented family | MDR.DE. Retrieved October 24, 2019 .