Feininger: Art + Science + Technology

Lyonel Feininger - Sunset - 1930 - oil on canvas - 47.94 x 77.79 cm (18 7/8 x 30 5/8 in.) - Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA (click photo for larger image)German-American painter Lyonel Feininger (1871-1956) ( ) was a leading exponent of Expressionism—and also very much embraced the Cubist style. Feininger’s paintings and teaching activities at the Bauhaus—a German school of design, architecture and applied arts—brought a new compositional discipline and lyrical use of color into German Expressionism. 

Preston Dickinson: A Fine Precisionist Lost Too Soon

Preston Dickinson - Industry - oil on canvas - 29 1/8 x 18 1/4 in. (74.0 x 46.5 cm) - Smithsonian American Art Museum (click photo for larger image)(William) Preston Dickinson (1889-1930) grew up in New York, where he worked as an office boy in a marine architect’s firm. One of the partners of the company was so impressed by the young boy’s sketches that he offered to pay for his tuition at the Art Students League.

Dickinson studied at the League for four years, then traveled to France, where he sketched at the Louvre and exhibited at the Salons. On his return to New York, he painted images of Manhattan and the Harlem River while selling socks door-to-door to support himself. 

Dickinson moved to Spain in 1930 but died a few months later from pneumonia, at the age of forty-one.

Alexander Calder: Father of the Mobile

Alexander Calder - Hollow Egg - 1939 - Wire and paint - 54 x 39 x 38 1/8 in. - The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. (click photo for larger image)Alexander Calder (1898-1976) was an American artist best known for his innovation of the mobile—suspended sheet metal and wire assemblies, activated in space by air currents. Visually fascinating and emotionally engaging, these works—along with his monumental outdoor bolted sheet metal stabiles—make Calder one of the most-recognizable and beloved individuals among modern artists. 

Calder also made a smaller number of sculptures in the more-traditional materials of wood and bronze, created paintings in gouache (opaque watercolor), produced drawings (including illustrations for books), and fashioned designer jewelry. Quite a versatile artist!

Nuam Gabo: A Pioneer of Constructivism

Nuam Gabo - Head No. 2 - 1916, enlarged version 1964 - Steel - Object: 1753 x 1340 x 1226 mm - Tate Gallery, London (click photo for larger image)Constructivist artist Naum Gabo (1890-1977) ( http://www.naum-gabo.com) was born Naum Neemia Pevsner in Russia in 1890. He began making constructed sculpture in Norway in 1915, when he took the name of Gabo. He used materials such as glass, plastic, and metal and created a sense of spatial movement in his work. During the 1920s, Gabo worked with a number of the Bauhaus artist. In later years, curves replaced angles in Gabo’s new spatial constructions, made of taut wire and plastic thread. 

Constructivism was a Russian artistic and architectural movement that was initially influenced by Cubism and Futurism. It is generally considered to have been initiated in 1913 with the “painting reliefs”—abstract geometric constructions—of Vladimir Tatlin. Gabo and his brother, Antoine Pevsner, joined Tatlin and his followers in Moscow, and became spokesmen of the movement. In Constructivism, assorted mechanical objects are combined into abstract mobile structural forms. The movement has influenced many aspects of modern architecture and design.

Jean Arp: Art Made of Anything

Jean Arp - Shirt Front and Fork 1922 - painted wood - inside the National Gallery of Art’s East Building, located on the National Mall, Washington. D.C. (click photo for larger image)Hans (Jean) Arp (1886-1966) was a French-German-American artist painter, sculptor, collagist and poet. Active in both the Dada and Surrealist movements, Arp was an artist who “could (and did) make anything into art. He’s among the first artists who regarded chance as a collaborator in the artistic process. He made it a point not to title his works until after they were completed, as a way of minimizing the influence of conscious mind on his art.

Arp’s works are abstract (as opposed to purely non-representational) and were always grounded in nature and reality. He was a master at placing recognizable forms into an unrecognizable context. Truly a “transitional figure” — Arp’s work forms a link between two of the most powerful movements of Modern Art.