Crucified

“Creativity is spirituality looking for a form. It is a quest of the human spirit to find somehow a way of flowing with the universal pulse that runs through all things,” wrote Feinstein, who saw abstraction as capable of carrying the same emotional weight as historical art. Throughout his career he drew inspiration from spiritual themes, especially the Passion of Christ. In this early painting, the black outlines that Feinstein used for Christ's body evoke paintings by French expressionist Georges Rouault, perhaps including Christ Mocked by Soldiers (1932, Museum of Modern Art). The artist later traveled to Colmar, France, to study Matthias Grünewald’s extraordinary Isenheim Altarpiece (1512–16). While Crucified does not have a direct referent in traditional iconography, Feinstein develops compositions and ideas that he admired in Rouault's work and perhaps the Lamentation scene in the Isenheim Altarpiece.

A graduate of the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art (later the University of the Arts), Feinstein was primarily known as a painter but he was also a printmaker. He was a founder and president of the abstract artist collective known as Group ’55, as well as codirector of Dubin/Gallery ’55, where the group often showed their work and held events. His practice evolved from realism through expressionism to abstract expressionism, and he frequently exhibited in Philadelphia, New York, and Provincetown until 1960, when, disillusioned by commercialism, he stopped showing his work but continued to paint. Feinstein was an instructor at Chestnut Hill Academy (now Springside Chestnut Hill Academy), the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Pratt Institute, in addition to teaching private classes and painting workshops for more than forty years.  

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