Sleeping Woman - Julia
Lyonel Feininger
LYONEL FEININGER, 1913. OIL ON CANVAS.
The human becomes landscape, as mountains emerge from the angles of her face and folds of her clothes. The chaise longue she reclines upon take on the tones of earthliness while the drapes and walls behind her become a sky, framing the subject in her duality. The subject, Julia, is Feininger’s wife and this is perhaps his most intimate study of her. A New York born artist of German heritage, as a teenager Feininger was sent to Hamburg to study where he was introduced to an burgeoning avant-garde movement that was sweeping Europe. Profoundly influenced by cubism, but not a member of the close-knit group of artists who developed it, he brought the ideas and philosophies of this new style back to America. This merged with an American optimism and a German romanticism to create a style distinctly his own, one which pays homage to the contemporary European scene and the modern styles of the day, while speaking to a spiritual love of his partner and the natural world that seem to blend into one before his eyes.