1943

Old Stone Bridge

Lyonel Feininger

American (active Germany), 1871 - 1956

In Old Stone Bridge, Lyonel Feininger returned to subject matter explored in earlier works: a construction spanning the river Ilm on the outskirts of Weimar, Germany. But here the artist depicted the bridge in the more muted colors and delicate lines typical of his work in the early 1940s. Born in New York, Feininger trained as an artist and built his career in Germany. He and his wife faced Nazi persecution in the 1930s due to her Jewish ancestry and his artistic affiliations. They fled to the United States just ahead of Degenerate Art, the exhibition organized in 1937 by the Nazi Party to attack modern art that featured some two dozen of his works. Feininger painted New York subjects while living there, particularly the city’s skyscrapers, but he also retained a strong sense of European art and culture, as well as a continuing preference for German sites and motifs, as seen here.