An intimate body of work
Renowned for his caricatures, his original style of cubism, and his figurative painting, artist Lyonel Feininger, a member of the Bauhaus School, the influential modern art offshoot founded in Germany in 1919, never intended his photographs for public consumption. They were private images, occasionally offered as gifts to family and friends. But an intimate exhibition titled “Lyonel Feininger: Photographs, 1928-1939,” in the Harvard Art Museums/Arthur M. Sackler’s fourth-floor gallery, offers viewers a comprehensive look at his largely unknown photographic work. A painter largely committed to oil on canvas, Feininger was initially skeptical about photography, what he called a “mechanical medium,” said Laura Muir during a “Two-Point Perspective” gallery talk in April, part of an ongoing series of discussions sponsored by the Harvard Art Museums that explore works from various viewpoints. But as a Bauhaus teacher — Feininger was hired by movement founder Walter Gropius as its first faculty appointment — the 57-year-old was greatly...