North Carolina Museum of Art

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HIGHLIGHTS

20th-Century Collection

1910–1950

Lyonel Feininger
(American, 1871–1956, active in Germany 1887–1937)

The Green Bridge II, 1916
Oil on canvas, 49 3/8 x 39 1/2 in. (125.4 x 100.3 cm)
Gift of Mrs. Ferdinand Möller, 57.38.1
© 2004 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn

In 1907 Feininger abruptly left a successful career as an internationally known political cartoonist and comic-strip artist to devote himself to painting. For the next several years he divided his time between Paris and Berlin. It was not, however, until he absorbed the lessons of cubism, seeing cubist works in a Paris exhibition in 1911, that he found himself as an artist. He also explored the French capital and its environs, often sketching the bridges and viaducts (like the one here).

Intrigued by the way cubism fractured an image into its parts, Feininger was equally curious about how things are put together. Moved by the clarity he found in the strict architectural patterns of Bach's music, another passion of his, he sought its visual equivalent. There is indeed a correspondence between the translucent, overlapping, repeated geometric forms in this painting and the contrapuntal character of fugues, which Feininger himself composed.