Provenance
The artist; by descent to his wife Julia Feininger (died 1970), New York, 1956; Pat and Theodore Lux Feininger, Cambridge, MA., by 1959 [San Francisco 1959]; Mr. and Mrs. Andreas Feininger, New York, by 1961 [Hess 1961]; given to the Art Institute of Chicago, Dec. 27, 1972.
Accession Number
41441
Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
Without frame: 89.3 × 71.5 cm (35 3/16 × 28 3/16 in.); 88.9 × 75.9 cm (35 × 29 7/8 in.)
Classification
Painting
Credit Line
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Andreas Feininger
Background & Context
Background Story
Lyonel Feininger's Manhattan Dawn (1944) is an oil on canvas from late in the artist's career, painted after he returned to the United States following the rise of the Nazi regime in Germany. The painting shows the New York skyline at dawn, the buildings rendered in Feininger's characteristic faceted, crystalline style. The composition is dominated by the vertical forms of skyscrapers, rendered in transparent planes of color that seem to glow with the light of early morning. The palette is cool and luminous, the forms dematerialized into a vision of the city as a structure of light and air.
Cultural Impact
Feininger's Manhattan paintings represent his response to the American city after his return from Germany, synthesizing his European modernist style with the subject of the American metropolis.
Why It Matters
This dawn view of Manhattan captures the city as a crystalline structure of light, Feininger's transparent planes and cool palette creating a vision of urban transcendence.
