Autumn Show 2021

“New York is the most amazing city in its atmosphere, colour and contrasts, in the whole world.”

Lyonel Feininger 

Feininger returned to New York in 1937 and quickly became absorbed in the city, continually depicting its architecture and the skyline it formed. Architectural Composition I is an important example of Feininger’s New York period. It displays Feininger’s development of a delicate geometric style composed of interlocking translucent planes, suggestive of both light rays and architectural forms. By representing the metropolis as a dynamic world of rhythm and movement he highlights and accentuates the beauty of the city.

Feininger loaned Architectural Composition I to MoMA for two exhibitions, one in 1944-5 and the next six years later in 1951-2. In 1956, the year he died, Feininger was chosen to be part of the American Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. Entitled American Artists Paint the City, the exhibition included Georgia O’Keffe, Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline and Willem de Kooning. Architectural Composition I was one of three Feininger paintings displayed. In the accompanying catalogue Katharine Kuh, curator of the Pavilion, described how Feininger ‘condenses and symbolizes all the shining lights of America’.

Architectural Composition I MoMA 1944-5

Moore originally conceived Hill Arches to be placed in a field opposite his studio in Perry Green.

Working models were an important part of Moore’s practice, with the artist using them to physicalise his ideal before scaling up to a larger size. The present work was a means for Moore to envisage the experience of walking round the sculpture, viewing each element from a different angle to see how they worked in harmony. The Henry Moore Foundation keeps both a bronze and plaster cast of Working Model for Hill Arches. Casts of Hill Arches can be found in the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge and opposite the Karlskirche in Vienna.