Marine with Sun (Marine mit Sonne) 1918

Lyonel Feininger made this print, Marine with Sun, using black ink on paper. Imagine him, with his chisels and gouges, digging into the block of wood. With each careful cut, he's pulling away material, defining form and space. Like a sculptor, he is carving out a world. His lines and shapes create a kind of playful, angular world, one that feels somehow both solid and fleeting. You see how the lines create dynamic tension as if everything is on the verge of shifting. I bet he was thinking a lot about boats and the sea when he made this. Maybe even a little homesick! I imagine the black ink must have felt like a weight, grounding him. Now, look closely at how he's rendered the sun. It's not just a circle but a dynamic, almost exploding form. He used bold strokes to capture the energy and intensity of light. Feininger was part of a whole movement of artists who were obsessed with geometry and structure. They were all riffing off each other, trying to figure out how to represent a world that was changing so rapidly. He knew, like all artists, that everything is connected.