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Label Text Feininger spent his boyhood practicing the violin with intent to follow in his family’s musical footsteps. At 16, he moved from New York to Germany to train professionally, but after learning his would-be professor was out of the country he drifted towards studying visual art. During a trip to Paris in 1911, Feininger was introduced to the Cubist pictorial style, which inspired the artist to compose his landscape and architectural pictures from fractured planes and prismatic rays. Music, however, remained a steady influence throughout his life. In Veiled Sunset, Feininger composed a landscape from subtle areas of translucent watercolor, semitransparent planes that build the picture’s background, and groups of lines that create a sense of architecture. These characteristics strongly point towards Feininger’s interest in the Cubist style, but as one art historian noted it also speaks to his passion for symphonic sound, as the lines in particular are “placed and spaced as particularly as notes, and each line has its full value.” October, 2020
Exhibition History"MCM - Y2K: A CENTURY OF ART ON PAPER," Des Moines Art Center, Dec. 11, 1999 - Feb. 13, 2000

"Styles of the Times," Des Moines Art Center, Jan. 2 - Mar. 1, 1998

"Diversity of Line: A Selection from the Permanent Collection," Des Moines Art Center, Nov. 17, 1990 - Apr. 7, 1991

"Truby Kelly Kirsch Memorial Collection," Public Library Dedication, Spencer, IA, Nov. 7 - 15, 1971

"Truby Kelly Kirsch Memorial Collection," circulated by the Iowa Arts Council to twelve locations in Iowa, 1970-1971

Cedar Rapids Art Association, Public Library, Jan. 3 - 28, 1962

"The Painting of Light" Des Moines Art Center, Mar. 3 - 27, 1960

"Art Today and Yesterday," Memorial Union, Iowa State University, 1960

"Truby Kelly Kirsch Memorial Collection," Des Moines Art Center, (circulated to: Sioux City Art Center, IA, Feb. 4 - 28, 1959; Westmar College, LeMars, Mar. 25 - Apr. 17, 1959 (work was not included in earlier circulation of the traveling exhibition))
Published ReferencesDES MOINES SUNDAY REGISTER, Apr. 17, 1955, ill.

"Gallery Guide," from "Diversity of Line" exhibition, Des Moines Art Center, Nov. 1990

"The Painting of Light," Des Moines Art Center, 1960, exh. cat. no.34

DES MOINES ART CENTER: SELECTED PAINTINGS, SCULPTURES AND WORKS ON PAPER, Des Moines Art Center, 1985, ref. pp.68-70

DMAC Bulletin, Sept. 1962, cover ill.
DimensionsSheet: 12 1/2 × 18 3/4 in. (31.8 × 47.6 cm)
Image: 10 1/8 × 16 1/4 in. (25.7 × 41.3 cm)
Accession Number 1953.20
Classificationswork on paper
CopyrightARS
SignedFeininger (l,l ink)
Inscriptions1945 (l,r ink)
ProvenanceArtist. (Curt Valentin Gallery, New York); Des Moines Art Center [purchased from the previous, 1953]
Veiled Sunset
Photo Credit: Rich Sanders, Des Moines
Photo Credit: Rich Sanders, Des Moines
Photo Credit: Rich Sanders, Des Moines
Lyonel Feininger
1918
Photo Credit: Rich Sanders, Des Moines
Lyonel Feininger
1918
Photo Credit: Rich Sanders, Des Moines
Lyonel Feininger
1919
Photo Credit: Rich Sanders, Des Moines
Lyonel Feininger
1951
Photo Credit: Rich Sanders, Des Moines
Wangechi Mutu
ca. 2000
Photo Credit: Rich Sanders, Des Moines
Anna Gaskell
2004
Photo Credit: Rich Sanders, Des Moines
William T. Wiley
1971
Photo Credit: Rich Sanders, Des Moines
Walt Kuhn
date unknown
Photo Credit: Rich Sanders, Des Moines
Luther Utterback
1976
Photo Credit: Rich Sanders, Des Moines
Dorothy Dehner
1947
Photo Credit: Rich Sanders, Des Moines
Marlene Dumas
1996