Description

Primarily a painter, Lyonel Feininger turned to the woodcut medium during World War I when paint supplies ran out. In this work, the wartime naval fleet is reduced to geometric shapes; the wood’s jagged edges formed sharp peaks in the sky and water that contribute to the fleet’s encroaching menace. Born in America, Feininger traveled to Germany as a teenager and remained in Europe through the late 1930s. In 1912 he met many of the Expressionists in Dresden and Munich, and exhibited with them in 1913.