Street of Barns

1914

Lyonel Feininger

Painter, American, 1871 - 1956

Sharp, angular forms in shades of laurel, bottle, and moss green, bronze and honey brown, turquoise, and steel gray are fragmented and faceted in this kaleidoscopic, abstract, vertical painting. The gray forms are near the center, and the ochre-brown forms are along the right third of the canvas. A few glints of dark yellow and rust orange are across the bottom, and the rest is filled in with earthy and cool greens. Each form is broken into strips, rays, or bands. The brown and gray areas come to points, like pitched roofs, and one parchment-white shape near the bottom right corner could be a building. The artist signed the lower right corner, “Feininger.”
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On View

East Building Mezzanine, Gallery 217-A

Artwork overview

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Acquired by the Museum Folkwang, Essen, from which it was removed by the Nazi government as "degenerate art" in 1937.[1] (Robert Norbert Ketterer, Lugano, Switzerland). (Sale no. 147, Kornfeld & Klipstein, Bern, June 1973, no. 221). Arnold A. [1916-2014] and Joan R. [1919-2019] Saltzman, Sands Point, New York; gift (partial and promised) 2001 to NGA; gift completed 2020.
[1] Beschlagnahmeinventar "Entartete Kunst" no. 16083, "Degenerate Art" Research Center, Freie Universität Berlin. http://emuseum.campus.fu-berlin.de/eMuseumPlus?service=ExternalInterface&moduleFunction=search

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1937

  • Entartete Kunst, Munich, 1937, no. 16083.

1991

  • "Degenerate Art" The Fate of the Avant-Garde in Nazi Germany, Los Angeles Country Museum of Art; Art Institute of Chicago, 1991 (shown only in Los Angeles).

2001

  • German Expressionist Paintings from the Saltzman Family Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 2001-2002, brochure, cover illustration.

Inscriptions

lower right: Feininger

Wikidata ID

Q20191873

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