?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 2,000 - $ 3,000
DISUSSING HIS YOUTH IN BERLIN AND THE REBUILDING OF GERMANY FEININGER, LYONEL. Illustrated Autograph Letter Signed, "the Feiningers," to Ulfert Wilke ("my dear Ulfert"), with ink and watercolor drawing, unsigned. The drawing, showing four geometric figures outlined by shimmering lines forming spaces colored in with blue and orange, at upper left of first page. 4x4 inches. The letter, thanking for birthday wishes, expressing relief on hearing of the way Germany is rebuilding after the War, remarking that he would dread returning to a once-familiar Berlin to find it changed, complaining that the Nazis had changed the names of some of the places familiar to him, stating that Wilke's experience in Italy would be important for his artistic development, promising to write his wife, and looking forward to meeting in New York. 2 pages, 4to, written on recto and verso of a single sheet; folds. Plymouth, 16 September 1951
". . . I enjoyed your description of your impressions during your stay in Germany, and it even relieved me to find you had found so much which seemed to be of good portent, in the re-building of devastation-ruined cities; especially that there was re-awakened interest in beautifying places, even amongst the wrecked streets & places [squares?]. "It must be one of the strangest experiences imaginable, to return to a city and find every familiar street and place so utterly changed. I should dread the experience, in Berlin W., where for so many years I lived, of finding only demolished houses. . . . [I]n my dreams I especially love to roam along the streets in the vicinity of the Lützow Platz; the Maassen Strasse and Nollendorf Platz--the Nazis changed the names already in the mid-thirties! I have the treasure of remembering all these places as they were when I wandered happily about them in my youth. Nothing should ever destroy this. . . . "Yes, I can feel for you when you say you are like an exile, away from your dear wife & boy Christopher; but your present stay in Italy will have the greatest importance for your future development in your art. . . ."
