1915, Lyonel Feininger, Avenue of Trees -- Fogg Art Museum (Cambridge)
From the museum label: When Feininger painted this work in 1915, the American-born artist and former cartoonist was gaining prominence in Germany’s modern art circles. Avenue of Trees reflects a shift away from his early figurative painting toward a new style inspired by the spatial investigations of cubism. The work of Picasso and Braque intrigued many artists in Germany. Some, like Feininger, had encountered it in Paris. Others had seen it in exhibitions such as those organized by the pioneering Galerie der Sturm in Berlin, which exhibited this painting in 1917 under the French title Allée. Employing a technique of faceting and fragmenting, Feininger transforms a scene derived from nature into a crystalline world of intersecting geometric planes that in places verges on abstraction. By the time Feininger became a master at the Bauhaus in 1919, his paintings had become increasingly architectonic and abstract, and the human figure had all but disappeared.
1915, Lyonel Feininger, Avenue of Trees -- Fogg Art Museum (Cambridge)
From the museum label: When Feininger painted this work in 1915, the American-born artist and former cartoonist was gaining prominence in Germany’s modern art circles. Avenue of Trees reflects a shift away from his early figurative painting toward a new style inspired by the spatial investigations of cubism. The work of Picasso and Braque intrigued many artists in Germany. Some, like Feininger, had encountered it in Paris. Others had seen it in exhibitions such as those organized by the pioneering Galerie der Sturm in Berlin, which exhibited this painting in 1917 under the French title Allée. Employing a technique of faceting and fragmenting, Feininger transforms a scene derived from nature into a crystalline world of intersecting geometric planes that in places verges on abstraction. By the time Feininger became a master at the Bauhaus in 1919, his paintings had become increasingly architectonic and abstract, and the human figure had all but disappeared.