Sale: 424 / Modern Art, June 11./13. 2015 in Munich Lot 265

 

265
Lyonel Feininger
West Deep III, 1932.
Watercolor
Estimate:
€ 50,000 / $ 54,000
Sold:
€ 95,000 / $ 102,600

(incl. surcharge)
West Deep III. 1932.
Watercolor and India ink drawing.
Signed and titled lower left, dated lower right. On laid paper. 29.5 x 47.3 cm (11.6 x 18.6 in), size of sheet. [KD].

Brilliant watercolor in fresh impression from the artist's best period of creation.
Accompanied by an expertise from Achim Moeller, New York, dated 4 July, 2012. The watercolor is registered in the Lyonel Feininger Archive of Watercolors and Drawings with the number 1157-07-04-12.

PROVENANCE: Private collection North Rhine-Westphalia.
Private collection Netherlands.

As of 1924 Lyonel Feininger regularly spent the summers with his second wife Julia in Deep on the Baltic Sea. Maritime motifs, which Feininger henceforth pursued with increasing interest, are at the core of a large number of watercolors and paintings which play an important role in the artist's oeuvre. The intricacies of the special weather conditions on the coast inspired Lyonel Feininger to remarkable interpretations. Additionally, his special technique of a formal consolidation of reality and its exaggeration to a dramatic and sublime expressiveness have added to the unmistakable character of Feininger's works. Owed to their curbed modernity they were admired by a large group of art lovers. While most common sea pieces depict the weather-related changes of the sea's surface with great drama, Lyonel Feininger finds his appropriate expression in the sea's unmatched calmness and vastness under high skies, which lets his pictures tie in with traditions of German Romanticism. Especially works by Caspar David Friedrich must be mentioned in this context. Lyonel Feininger's watercolors from this work complex are masterpieces of a sensitive interpretation of a real sea landscape in which he sees the sublimity of its calm romantic.



265
Lyonel Feininger
West Deep III, 1932.
Watercolor
Estimate:
€ 50,000 / $ 54,000
Sold:
€ 95,000 / $ 102,600

(incl. surcharge)