Zirchow I

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Artist Lyonel Feininger (American, 1871–1956)American, 1871–1956

CultureAmerican

Titles

Zirchow I

Date1912

MediumOil on canvas

DimensionsCanvas: 31 11/16 × 39 1/2 in. (80.5 × 100.3 cm)
Frame: 39 5/8 × 47 1/2 × 2 7/8 in. (100.6 × 120.7 × 7.3 cm)

Credit LineSarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation, Houston

Object numberBF.1979.16

Not on view

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Department

Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation

Object Type

PAINTING

DescriptionBorn in New York, Lyonel Feininger traveled to Germany in 1887 to complete his studies, and he settled in Berlin shortly thereafter. In 1912 and 1913, he became associated with the artists’ groups Die Brücke (The Bridge) and Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider), adopting the Cubo-Expressionist language of Germany’s vanguard. Feininger spent summers on Usedom Island on the Baltic coast, where the 13th-century St. Jacobus church in Zirchow captured his imagination. He returned to this motif many times in paintings, drawings, and woodcuts, observing: “There are some church steeples in God-forsaken villages which belong among the most mystical achievements of so-called civilized man that I know.”

ProvenanceDr. Walter Kaesbach Foundation, Mönchengladbach, Germany; appropriated from the Städtisches Kunstmuseum, Mönchengladbach, by the German National Socialist government, 1937; [Galerie Roman Norbert Ketterer, Campione d'Italia, Lugano, Switzerland, 1968]; purchased by the Cecil Amelia Blaffer Foundation; given to the Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation, 1979.

Exhibition History"Expressionismus," Spencer A. Samuels Company, New York, 1968.

Campione d'Italia, 1968.

San Antonio, 1981.

Texas, 1983–1992.

"Modernism in A Century of Change II: Expressionism," Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 1998.

"Lyonel Feininger Retrospective," Yokosuka Museum of Art, Japan, August 2–October 5, 2008; Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art, Nagoya, Japan, October 17–December 23, 2008; Miyagi Museum of Art, Sendai, Japan, January 10–March 1, 2009.

"Van Gogh to Munch: European Masterworks," Santa Barbara Museum of Art, California, June 4, 2011–June 4, 2013.

Inscriptions, Signatures and Marks

Signed and dated upper left: "Feininger 12"

Cataloguing data may change with further research.

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