Lyonel Feininger

Crystalline pictorial worlds

Lyonel Feininger’s pictorial worlds unfold a crystalline glow. His seascapes, at first, show traditional green-blue waves. Later, a system of lines appears, which finally merge into the superimposed facets as a reflection of light. The painter not only treats the sky with cubist freedom, especially in his famous paintings of Thuringian churches, lines of light point mystically towards the sky.

There seems to be a kind of architecture of wide movement, which seem highly dynamic with prismatic cubatures.

“What is seen must be inwardly transformed and crystallised”, Lyonel Feininger declared in 1907.