Arcueil II, March 21, 1916

About the Work

In 1916, Feininger made this drawing of the round-arched aqueduct in the town of Arcueil, south of Paris, disintegrating it into prism-like forms. To construct his composition, he broke open the elements of the built structures and assembled the individual ‘fragments’ anew. He refrained from depicting superfluous details and departed from the correct representation of the proportions and perspective. By rubbing the charcoal, he evoked the impression of long, dark shadows that account for the rather gloomy atmosphere.

About the Acquisition

From 1900 onwards, the Frankfurt chemist and industrialist Carl Hagemann (1867‒1940) assembled one of the most important private collections of modern art. It included numerous paintings, drawings, watercolours and prints, especially by members of the artist group “Die Brücke”. After Carl Hagemann died in an accident during the Second World War, the then Städel director Ernst Holzinger arranged for Hagemann’s heirs to evacuate his collection with the museum’s collection. In gratitude, the family donated almost all of the works on paper to the Städel Museum in 1948. Further donations and permanent loans as well as purchases of paintings and watercolours from the Hagemann estate helped to compensate for the losses the museum had suffered in 1937 as part of the Nazi’s “Degenerate Art” campaign. Today, the Hagemann Collection forms the core of the Städel museum’s Expressionist collection.