Lot 9 D

When Feininger moved to Weimar with his family in the spring of 1919 - to take charge of the printmaking workshops at the newly founded Staatliches Bauhaus - he experienced the long hoped-for artistic recognition for the first time. The new teaching position gave him pleasure and at the same time enabled him to transform his favourite motifs of the Weimar region into drawings: the simple village churches in the towns of Gelmeroda, Vollersroda and Possendorf. In this spirit, he had already written to his artist friend Alfred Kubin in June 1913: "The villages, probably over a hundred, in the surrounding area are magnificent! The architecture [...] is just so stimulating to me, in part so immensely monumental! There are [sic] church towers in godforsaken nests that are the most mystical thing I know of so-called cultural people!" (Letter of 15 June 1913, Feininger Archive, Moeller Fine Art Projects).
In the summer of 1919, in the village of Possendorf, south of Weimar, Feininger produced an extensive and characteristic series of nature sketches depicting the small houses and the 13th-century church. The following year he resumed his trips to nearby Possendorf, but now used ink pen and watercolour instead of pencil to capture the picturesque houses of the village. For the offered sheet "Possendorf I" he compositionally reverted to one of the pencil sketches he had made the year before, namely the drawing "Possendorf" in the Harvard Art Museums (Busch-Reisinger Museum, Gift of Julia Feininger). Compared to the small-format pencil work, which faithfully reproduces the houses with their peculiarly warped roofs, small windows and fences, the ink pen drawing is clearly abstracted. Through the restless stroke and the overdrawing of the outlines, the sheet is also reminiscent of his early caricatures and therefore gives the work a certain lightness.