Born in the United States of German ancestry, Lyonel Feininger was a professor at the Bauhaus, the renowned art school founded in Weimar in 1919. The rise of Nazism and its frontal attack on artistic modernity forced him to flee Germany and return to his native country in 1937.

This work from 1932 expresses Feininger’s unease in the face of the events that were occurring throughout Europe. It represents the city of Deep on the Baltic coast of Germany, where he spent his summers since 1924 along with his wife Julia Berg. Instead of portraying the quietude, seclusion, and tranquility of a beach holiday in northern Europe, he produced a symbolic composition; a harrowing drawing that expresses his concern for a catastrophic future.

What is the figure that appears in the sky? A cloud? A giant bird? An airplane? Through it Feininger introduces the threat of uncertainty into a solid and ordered structure.