A leader of the Cubo-Expressionist movement and a founding member of the experimental Bauhaus school, Lyonel Feininger embraced abstraction as a way of conveying new vision and utopian aspirations. Although his first success was as the cartoonist of popular newspaper comics, such as "Kin-der-Kids" and "Wee Willie Winkie's World" for the Chicago Sunday Tribune, when he decided to pursue a career in fine art he was enthusiastically embraced by several German Expressionist groups, including Die Brucke and Der Blaue Reiter. Later, he was the first faculty member to be recruited by Walter Gropius for the new Bauhaus school where he led the printmaking workshop. When his work was included in the 1937 Degenerate Art exhibit, marking him as a target for artistic censorship and surveillance, Feininger returned to America with his family where he continued to produce art and teach.