Wreck (Ship Aground) (Wrack) (gestrandetes Schiff)

In 1912, soon after his first encounter with Cubism in France, Lyonel Feininger began to selectively incorporate the style’s faceted geometric forms into his own work. The fact that Cubism’s sharp angular lines and planes were well-suited to the woodcut medium was not lost on him. In 1918 Feininger produced his first woodcuts while living in Germany as a resident alien during World War I—over 100 woodblocks in one year—many of which were carved in the cubist manner.

The motifs of ships and the sea, for which Feininger had a lifelong love, are recurrent in his work across media. In this woodcut, the motif of a sinking ship observed by onlookers from the shore draws on a central theme in 19th-century German Romanticism—human effort confounded by the sublime powers of nature. Feininger’s use of the cubist manner here, however, undercuts the emotional appeal of the romantic theme yet retains its sense of uncertainty. Is it possible, in this print and several other woodcuts from 1918 and 1919 that portrayed Germany’s commercial and military shipping vessels, that Feininger was subtly commenting on Germany’s defeat in the war, and the economic ruin and social uncertainties that followed in its wake?