T. LUX FEININGER

WORLD SAILOR

After opening at the Kunsthalle zu Kiel in summer 2010, it is now the turn of the Ahlers Pro Arte Foundation to host the exhibition T. Lux Feininger – World Sailor – in honour of the youngest of Lyonel Feininger’s three sons, who died aged 101 at home on Arlington Street in Cambridge on 7 July 2011. T. Lux Feininger was born in Berlin in 1910 and enrolled at the Bauhaus in Dessau at the tender age of sixteen, where he became a student of theatre under Oskar Schlemmer. He soon became a member of the legendary Bauhauskapelle, drawing attention with his daring photographs of work and life at the Bauhaus. From 1929 onwards, he threw himself into painting. In 1932, T. Lux Feininger left Germany for Paris and emigrated to the United States in 1936, ahead of his parents. The majority of T. Lux Feininger’s paintings depict maritime scenes. His keen eye

for detail is sometimes reminiscent of captains’ paintings, and yet his pictures are filled with an intensity of colour and narrative that makes them more similar to magical realism. There is no doubt that T. Lux’s father’s enthusiasm for the seafaring world was infectious. Just as Lyonel Feininger often looked to the past and explored the world of the nineteenth century, the sailing ships in his son’s pictures are often from bygone times. The rich suspense of the works and their great powers of suggestion are heightened by this combination of detailed reproductions of ships and a surreal, dreamlike atmosphere.

The enigmatic world of images, composed of precipitous lines and daring perspectives that hark back to T. Lux Feininger’s photographs, is also based on literary inspiration such as the tales of Joseph Conrad. Other sources of inspiration include Feininger’s travels to the Baltic Sea and to Brittany, as well as his experience of loneliness and longing as an émigré in Paris and New York.

The exhibition presents around sixty oil paintings, drawings and photographs from the early stages of T. Lux Feininger’s artistic career, from his time at the Bauhaus to his enlistment in the U.S. Army in 1942. Until now, the reception of his work in Germany has remained limited to a small circle of enthusiasts. Their collections have provided the majority of those works which have only very rarely been on public display.