Torturm II 1925

Curator: Oh, my! It’s so fractured. It looks like the soul of a city exploded and reformed in glass. Editor: Indeed. What we have here is Lyonel Feininger’s "Torturm II," painted in 1925 using oil on canvas. Feininger was a master of fractured form, exploring the cityscapes and architecture through a cubist lens. Curator: Fractured is right. Look at how the light just slices through everything! Even the little figure in the bottom right is all planes and angles. He seems so lost in this geometric maze. I feel lost just looking at it, yet somehow…compelled. Editor: That figure, dwarfed by the architecture, invites contemplation. Notice how Feininger uses those translucent, overlapping planes? He’s not just representing buildings. He’s layering symbolic meanings, exploring how modern life can fragment our perception and experience. The gate or tower itself is a very old symbol of access, and maybe restriction? Curator: Restriction! Yes, like being caught in a million pieces of stained glass! But, at the same time, look at those blues and yellows—there's a strange sort of beauty there. Like a hymn rendered in sharp edges. You feel the artist trying to put Humpty Dumpty back together, the modern world… But he can’t… or doesn’t want to. Editor: Perhaps both. Feininger, entrenched in Expressionism, embraced this aesthetic. These colors and shapes echo early German stained glass, drawing on medieval archetypes. This gives the image a sense of both modernity and ancient tradition, reflecting his complex perspective. This isn't just about a place. This piece embodies the psychological experience of the industrial era—alienation and a strange kind of rebirth at once. Curator: Absolutely, alienation. But that’s so Feininger, isn’t it? Creating this odd, mesmerizing beauty from the chaos and isolation. Like capturing a fleeting moment, but frozen in time and space and reframed! And somehow still resonant after all these years. Editor: It invites us to consider our own fractured perspectives, reminding us that even in deconstruction, profound meaning can be revealed, through light, through angles, in shared experience.