"Yacht" ("Sailing Ship on Red Sea"), 1938

This work is an especially lovely example of Feininger’s prismatic style, influenced by Cubism, Futurism and the years at the Bauhaus, which he had constantly developed further and varied. The trapezoidal composition results in an emphatic dynamic. The image field itself is divided in its composition into three widths of colour, which stand for water, land and sky. At a pure motif level, all elements of the painting thus possess a momentum of motion, which leads paradoxically to the sailing vessel making a static impression. The sheet is an outstanding example of how Feininger reshaped the principles of Cubism and Bauhaus into his very own pictorial language throughout his entire body of work.