Julia Feininger – Artist, Caricaturist, and Manager

Julia was born Julia Lilienfeld on Nov. 23, 1880, in Berlin, the daughter of Bernhard Lilienfeld and his wife Jeanette Zuntz, and thus into a prosperous Jewish merchant family. At the age of 15 she graduated from Senior Girl’s School and from 1896 to 1900 completed artistic training at the ‘Studio for Ladies” run by Adolf Meyer. Until well into the following year, she also took classes at the “Verein der Künstlerinnen und Kunstfreundinnen”, an association that supported up-and-coming female artists and enabled them to attend drawing classes at an academic level. She studied drawing nudes under Symbolist Martin Brandenburg.

Only a little later her career as an artist came to a halt: In 1903, she married physician Walter Berg. We can assume that during this marriage Julia Berg abandoned her artistic practice and mainly dedicated herself to domestic duties. Her life changed drastically in 1905 whenby pure chance while traveling by train to Graal on the Baltic coast she met Lyonel Feininger, nine years her senior. It was a fateful encounter and only a little later Julia Berg separated from her then husband. Such a move was very much an exception in the early 20th century and from today’s perspective seems to have been highly progressive and courageous.

It is interesting to note that at the beginning of their relationship the couple formed a creative working partnership, signed drawings together, and supported each other in the process of self-expression. This mutual artistic influence and inspiration can be clearly seen precisely in Julia’s early years as an artist. Testimony to this is the study of a tree stump dating from 1905, which is signed by both with the words “Berg und Feininger”, as is the correspondence between the two artists in which they discuss technical issues and the challenges in depicting trees. At the same time, as Dietlinde Hamburger emphasized last year in her “Findetage – Ritbnitz im Leben und Werk von Lyonel Feininger”, the tree was symbolic of Julia Berg’s development as an artist as she herself wrote in a letter to Lyonel Feininger dated Oct. 6, 1905: “(…) but no, I was pruned and tied and grafted and was meant to be a tree quite different from the one I was by nature. Yes, and what did that lead to? The gardener is now complaining about the tree gone wild.” These lines suggest that Julia’s artistic practice suffered under the domestic life of her first marriage and only flourished again after meeting Lyonel Feininger.

From taking a break for the family to managing a life’s work

Although Lyonel Feininger always supported her wife in resuming her artistic work, it was not until 1912 that she exhibited ten pieces as part of the “Ausstellung moderner geschnittener Silhouetten” in the Hohenzollern Kunstgewerbehaus in Berlin.

When the Feiningers moved to the Bauhaus in Weimar, in 1919, Julia Feininger took part in both social and student life, and seized the opportunity to experiment with new materials. She created not only ceramic works in the pottery workshop, but also enrolled in her husband’s Nature class and evening classes in nude drawing and was thereafter officially accepted as a full-time student at the Bauhaus. Today, some of these ceramic pieces are in private collections. Julia Feininger also designed puppets (including a prince and princess, a vizir, a magician, and other figures) for “Tales of 1,001 Nights”; the play was, however, never performed. As Lyonel Feininger became ever more successful and his artistic career gained momentum, Julia Feininger increasingly acted behind the scenes. Like so many other female artists of her day, she uncompromisingly waived her own artistic ambitions and instead assumed the role of supporter, promoter, and intermediary for her husband’s output. Just how much the couple needed each other, acted as equals, and indeed how strong Julia’s influence on Lyonel’s outlook and art was can be gleaned from many of his published letters to Julia.