Factory

Artist Lyonel Feininger American, 1871–1956, active in Germany 1887–1937

Date1953

MediumWatercolor and ink on paper

Dimensionsoverall: 10 3/8 × 19 1/8 in. (26.4 × 48.6 cm)
frame: 17 1/8 × 25 1/8 in. (43.5 × 63.8 cm)

ClassificationsPaintings

Credit LineGift of Mrs. Lyonel Feininger in memory of W. R. Valentiner

Object numberG.59.23.1

On View

On view

Label TextLyonel Feininger was a former instructor at the Bauhaus school in Germany, where clean design and functional aesthetics were central. That ethos runs throughout his body of work, including Factory, where he presents a fractured view of architecture through a combination of transparent watercolor washes and precise line.

Having taught at the Bauhaus, Josef Albers often recruited fellow former instructors to join him at Black Mountain College, including Feininger, whom he invited to teach during the summer of 1945. That season, Feininger’s course description in the school’s brochure emphasized personalized instruction, offering “individual criticism and experimental advice related to personality and gifts shown in students’ work.”

[Jared Ledesma, Curator of 20th-Century and Contemporary Art, June 2025]ProvenanceCreated United States, 1953; collection of the artist; his wife, Julia Berg Feininger (1880–1970), 1956; given to NCMA, 1959.Published References"Gifts Presented to the North Carolina Museum of Art in Memory of W. R. Valentiner," North Carolina Museum of Art Bulletin 3 (1959), listed and illus. (b-w) 44.

Masterpieces of Art: In Memory of William R. Valentiner, 1880-1958 (exhibition catalogue) (Raleigh: North Carolina Museum of Art, 1959), cat. no. 163.

American Paintings since 1900 from the Permanent Collection (exhibition catalogue) (Raleigh: North Carolina Museum of Art, 1967), cat. no. 17, illus. (b-w).

A Catalogue of Drawings and Watercolors (exhibition catalogue) (Raleigh: North Carolina Museum of Art, 1969), cat. no. 21, illus. (b-w).
Exhibition HistoryRaleigh, NC, North Carolina Museum of Art, "Masterpieces of Art: In Memory of William R. Valentiner, 1880-1958," April 6-May 17, 1959, cat. no. 163

Raleigh, NC, North Carolina Museum of Art, "American Paintings Since 1900 from the Permanent Collection," April 1-25, 1967, cat. no. 17, illus. (b-w).

Raleigh, NC, North Carolina Museum of Art, "Drawings and Watercolors," Summer 1969, cat. no. 21, illus. (b-w).

Rocky Mount, NC, Rocky Mount Arts Center, "Black Mountain College Artists," January 15-February 28, 1978.

Asheville, NC, Asheville Art Museum, "Black Mountain College Retrospective," March 14-May 14, 1978.

Winston-Salem, NC, Wake Forest University, "German Expressionist Works," February 15-March 15, 1979.

Raleigh, NC, North Carolina Museum of Art, "American Works on Paper: 1943-1974," July 12-October 16, 1983.

Raleigh, NC, North Carolina Museum of Art, "The Legacy of W. R. Valentiner," January 25-March 29, 1998.

Raleigh, NC, North Carolina Museum of Art, "The People's Collection Reimagined," July 14, 2025-present.
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