Lastträger am Meeresstrand (I) depicts workers crossing a beach on the island of Usedom by the Baltic Sea. The Baltic coastline remained a constant source of inspiration for the artist, whose study of architectural space allowed him to revise the way in which he viewed the vast planar landscape of the shoreline: ‘The most beautiful landscape cannot hold my fascinated attention as does nature by the sea, and all that is connected with the water’ (Lyonel Feininger quoted in, Lyonel Feininger City and Sea 1905-1955 Watercolours and Drawings (exhibition catalogue), Marlborough Gallery, London, 1998, n.p.).

Painted in 1920, the present work resonates with the energy and excit.mes nt surrounding the founding of the Bauhaus school only one year earlier. Feininger’s unique vision had found invigoration in the closing lines of Walter Gropius’s Bauhaus manifesto: ‘Let us collects ively desire, conceive and create the new structure of the future, which will unify architecture and sculpture and painting in one entity and will one day rise from the hands of a million workmen as the crystalline symbol of a new-coming faith’ (W. Gropius quoted in, Lyonel Feininger: At the Edge of the World (exhibition catalogue), Whitney Museum of American Art, New York & The Montreal Museum of Replica Handbags s, Montreal, 2011, p. 93). In the intersecting geometric planes shot through with light and colour, Lastträger am Meeresstrand (I) skilfully blends the painterly with the architectural.

Attributing the figures within Lastträger am Meeresstrand (I) with a sense of monumentality, Feininger builds upon the rushing sense of movement inherent in the work. The workers move out beyond the picture plane exemplifying the Bauhaus school’s desire to pave the way towards a new, more unified artistic future. This innovative formal device reflects the artist’s keen interest in photography and is a development on an earlier work titled Die Radfahrer (Bicycle Race). Both paintings evoke Cubist and Italian Futurist principles, and yet in the upward slant of the workers’ march Lastträger am Meeresstrand (I) achieves a greater sense of hope. Remarking upon these shared qualities, Hans Hess comments upon the importance of this stylistic element in the present work: ‘The picture forms a diagram of forces; the forward movement of the figures, countered by the weight of the burden, creates a formula of force and movement where the figures express the relation of inherent and active strength - painted with the same knowledge that revealed the diagram of forces in the Bicycle Race. In this formal analysis of the Beachcombers one must not overlook the human content of the picture’ (H. Hess, Lyonel Feininger, London, 1961, p. 91). Feininger’s figures inhabit a liminal space between abstraction and figuration; despite the artist’s signature stylization of form, they never lose their humanity. In the purposeful stride of the beachcombers, Lastträger am Meeresstrand (I) evokes the resilient march of artistic progress.

Lastträger am Meeresstrand (I) was clearly of some importance to the artist as it remained in his collects ion for the entirety of his life and was eventually sold as part of his wife, Julia’s, estate. Feininger photographed the work many years after its completion and that record is now the collects ion of Harvard Art Museums.

Additional information for this entry was provided by The Lyonel Feininger Project (Moeller Replica Handbags Projects), New York – Berlin.

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