"Untitled (Dunes)", 1953

Lyonel Feininger was fascinated by the manifold landscape motifs and the meteorological phenomena of the sea. Feininger's formative confrontation with the sea happened at a time when he was beginning to break free from the bizarre figure paintings of his early works. His artistic interest in the vast, ever changing Baltic Sea began with his first sojourn in the bay of Lübeck in 1921. He had grown up in New York, not far from the port, and boats and ships had always fascinated him, but since his first visit to the village of Deep in Pomerania, which lies directly on the mouth of the river Rega into the Baltic, the sea and the coast became central themes of his oeuvre.