Herbs

As part of my recent garden improvements, I have refreshed our pots of herbs. This shows two sorts of thyme and one of parsley.  The thyme is to be used in tonight's dinner - garlic and herb roasted lamb on boulangère potatoes.

The Bauhaus School of Art and Design, founded in Germany in 1919, influenced many 20th century designers, architects and artists. Some of its staff were and became very successful in their own right.

Lyonel Feininger is one of my favourite painters, who happens to be related to one of my friends. Lyonel was born in New York in 1871 and moved to New York as a young man.  He was one of the founders and longest-serving staff of the Bauhaus where he headed the print workshop.  He returned to New York in 1937 and died there in 1956.

His paintings have a recognisable style, combining elegant geometric shapes and subtle colours, mostly of landscapes. His Tower I (1926) is a typical urban landscape, with simple shapes of buildings, beams of light and semi-abstract figures.

I will return to Feininger later in this self-administered course.  He is one of a number of artists about whom I have much to read and study in detail. 

Another Bauhaus artist was Paul Klee. His work has similarities to Feininger,  as Red Balloon (1922) shows, depicting a street scene in Tunisia. The shapes of the buildings are simply geometric and lacking in detail but their colours, perspective and assembly are clear.  The balloon of the title is the focal point of the work, dominating the image as it flows above the urban structure.