The exhibition features a rare collection of woodcuts and preparatory drawings for woodcuts that Lyonel Feininger (1871–1956) made between 1918 and 1921. The artist cherished these pristine works, most of which are drawn from his personal collection.

Feininger began making woodcuts in the spring of 1918. In the summer of that year, he and his family went on vacation to the scenic town of Braunlage in the Harz Mountains. The bucolic setting stimulated his work on his new medium.

Though Feininger was inspired by the natural surroundings of the Harz Mountains and their magnificent spruce trees, his subjects also emerged from his imagination and pictures his children made. He prepared for his woodcuts by making small pencil drawings on a sketchpad, producing inventive pictures of ships, trains, and hunting lodges. Feininger was so sure of these compositions that he promptly carved many of their motifs into wooden blocks. By the end of 1918, he had completed an impressive 117 woodblocks.

Feininger conveyed his ardent preoccupation with the medium in a letter to his friend, Alfred Kubin, in March 1919, writing, “I have hardly painted at all, nor made any drawings. The only thing I have done is take up woodcuts....This technique gives me so much pleasure and I just dropped everything else. But now it’s time for me to move forward enthusiastically with painting!”

This concentrated period of making woodcuts was instrumental in helping Feininger return to painting and drawing with renewed vigor. His engagement with woodcuts helped him to work out difficult aesthetic questions and became a crucial step in his artistic development.

Lyonel Feininger frequently numbered his woodcuts at the bottom center. In his numbering system, the first two digits indicate the year he made the woodcut and the last one to two digits serve to keep count of his production in a given year. For example, “184” means that Feininger made the woodcut in 1918 and it was his fourth one made that year, while “1829” means the 29th woodcut made in 1918.


Moeller Fine Art

Achim Moeller Ltd., founded in London in June 1972, moved to New York in October of 1984 as Moeller Fine Art Ltd. The gallery specializes in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century masterworks, and regularly organizes museum-quality exhibitions, including “From Daumier to Matisse: French Master Drawings from the John C. Whitehead Collection,” “Howard Wise: Exploring the New,” and “Between Friends: Giacomo Balla + Piero Dorazio,” “Lyonel Feininger + Mark Tobey.” Moeller Fine Art is the foremost gallery in the United States for works by German Expressionists and the Masters of the Bauhaus.

For nearly, fifty years, Achim Moeller, the gallery’s principal, has helped build important and substantial private and public collections that are coherent in concept, period, and quality. Moeller Fine Art also assists individuals and institutions with collection management, insurance valuation, tax and estate planning, and auction representation.

For further information, please contact +1 212 644 2133 or office@moellerfineart.com. To view highlights from the exhibition or to learn more about the artist, please visit our website.