ANDREAS FEININGER (1906-1999), TRAFFIC ON 5TH AVENUE, NEW YORK CITY, 1948 gelatin silver print, printed later; 12 1/2 x 17 1/2 (image); 15.75 x 19.75 in. (sheet); signed, numbered (AP) verso in ink, copyright 'Time Inc. 1990' in an unidentified hand in pencil on the verso. Condition: Excellent. AFE-0013

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ANDREAS FEININGER

Although an American citizen, Feininger did not come to the United States until he was 33. Son of the late acclaimed artist Lyonel Feininger, he was born in Paris in 1906, and graduated with highest honors in architecture from schools in Germany, including the Weimar Bauhaus. At the time, Feininger was using a camera as a reference aid in creating his building designs. The camera was his "mechanical sketchbook."

Commissions were scarce for non-European citizens in the depressed economy. After a year's work in France for the legendary architect Le Corbusier, followed by a struggle to find employment in Stockholm, Feininger turned his attention full-time to photography. He sold his first photos in 1932, moved with his family to the United States in 1939, and in 1943 became a staff photographer for LIFE magazine where he completed more than 430 photo essays in a twenty-year span.

Full of towering skyscrapers, broad swaths of road, and angles of geometric perfection, Feininger's works are masterful in their technical excellence and panoramic grandeur. Through Feininger's trained eye, the beauty and intricacies of both the man-made and natural world were magnified and intensified. From the broad span of bridges, exuding progress and power, to the symmetrical perfection of the skeleton of a carbon viper, Feininger's images revealed a new aesthetic of order and geometric perfection in his abstraction of scale. Feininger had said that the city as a subject, had attracted him since his earliest days as a photographer. But in time this love grew to include all the aspects of the city…its buildings, its people, its cars and traffic jams, its confusion and even its ugliness. "I see the city as a living organism: dynamic, sometimes violent, and even brutal," he stated.

A prolific and admired writer, Feininger published several textbooks and picture books on photography that are now translated into several languages. His work was included in Edward Steichen’s world-famous Family of Man exhibition. Feininger's photographs are in many institutions including: The Smithsonian Institution; Metropolitan Museum of Art; The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA); Victoria and Albert Museum of Art, London; Museum fur Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg, Germany; Museum of the City of New York, The New York Historical Society, and the International Center of Photography. Feininger’s archive is held at the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, AZ. Andreas Feininger passed away in 1999 in New York.

©Alan Klotz Gallery

Excellent

16 x 20 in