Gelmeroda III 1913

Curator: Here we have Lyonel Feininger’s “Gelmeroda III,” painted in 1913. This is one of several works he created depicting the village church of Gelmeroda in Germany. Editor: Immediately, I'm struck by how cool and austere the palette is. It's almost monochromatic, using blues, whites, and grays, with this fractured, crystalline structure making the whole scene appear fragile, almost like ice about to break. Curator: Exactly. Feininger's use of crystalline forms owes a great deal to Cubism, and the way that light seems to both penetrate and refract across the surface certainly connects to that style’s exploration of simultaneous perspectives. Editor: Though, unlike some Cubist works, it's still largely representational. The church is still very much a church; he's not completely abandoning form in the pursuit of pure abstraction. Instead, the expressive, almost yearning quality I detect stems directly from the steep vertical lines. Curator: And these forms, like those shards of glass, have everything to do with the architectural style that was burgeoning in Europe at the time, as well as Feininger's own political context. Think of the rise of Expressionism, Die Brücke… artists wrestling with the rapid urbanization and societal shifts right before the First World War. Churches as stable points of community were losing meaning to many, their presence was splintering. Editor: That sense of impending fracture really comes across. There's an interesting contrast in this painting too; it depicts something timeless - a church-rendered with such a strikingly modern and even somewhat harsh geometric vocabulary. It's almost as if tradition and modernity are clashing head-on. Curator: Precisely! The fracturing not only disrupts the expected stability but almost serves as a visual metaphor for the disruption that social and industrial forces have. Editor: The angularity also creates its own sort of spiritual language too. A Gothic spire shooting toward the heavens, but rendered in these jagged, almost aggressive shards, offers up new questions about the place of tradition as the new era begins. Curator: So, Feininger takes a familiar subject matter, filters it through this Expressionist and Cubist lens, to explore questions about history and societal shift at a crucial juncture in European history. Editor: And what may on the surface seem like a representational church portrait becomes a powerful visual exploration into structure, society, and perhaps some deeper symbolic or architectural meaning for us too.