Alexej von Jawlensky

Sale: Stuttgarter Kunstkabinett, Stuttgart, 27th-28th November 1956, lot 381
Galerie Jacques Fricker, Paris
Galerie Aenne Abels, Cologne
Private Collection
Sale: Christie’s, London, 25^th March 1980, lot 46
Private Collection, Switzerland (purchased at the above sale)
Thence by descent to the present owner

Cologne, Galerie Aenne Abels, A. Jawlensky, 1958, no. 14
Bonn, Kunstsammlungen, Alexej Jawlensky – Adolf Hölzel, 1958, no. 10
Berlin, Haus am Waldsee, Alexej Jawlensky, 1958, no. 39

Clemens Weiler, Alexej Jawlensky, Cologne, 1959, no. 174, illustrated p. 240
Maria Jawlensky, Lucia Pieroni-Jawlensky & Angelica Jawlensky, Alexej von Jawlensky. Catalogue raisonné of the oil paintings 1914-1933, London, 1992, vol. II, no. 744, illustrated p. 117

Executed on linen-finish paper, laid down on a board at the time of execution. The surface is lightly varnished, with some traces of surface dirt, and there is a diagonal crease line running along the lower left corner, and a few vertical scratches along the lower right edge. There is minor pigment loss to the lower right corner and at the upper right corner, and there are some losses to the red pigment in the lower left corner. There are approximately eight pin holes to the outer corners, and two at the centre of the upper edge. UV examination reveals no evidence of fluorescence of retouching. Overall, this work is in good condition.
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Jawlensky’s reliance upon colour as a means of visual expression derived from the examples of the Fauve painters of France. Jawlensky first met these artists, including Henri Matisse and Kees van Dongen, shortly after the Fauves’ first exhibition at the Salon d’Automne in 1905. He was inspired by their wild coloration and expressive brushwork, which had a profound impact on his painting thereafter. Like Matisse, who famously remarked, ‘I used colour as a means of expressing my emotion and not as a transcription of nature’ (Jacqueline & Maurice Guillaud, Matisse: Rhythm and Line, New York, 1987, p. 24), Jawlensky believed that colour communicated the complex emotions of his subjects.

Another important influence on Jawlensky's painting during this period was the multi-dimensional approach of the Cubists, whose fragmented and highly abstracted compositions he had seen in Paris. As Clemens Weiler has noted, ‘Cubism...supplied Jawlensky with the means of simplifying, condensing and stylizing the facial form even further, and this simplified and reduced shape he counterbalanced by means of even more intense and brilliant coloring. This enabled him to give these comparatively small heads a monumentality and expressive power that was quite independent of their actual size’ (Clemens Weiler, Jawlensky, Heads Faces Meditations, London, 1971, p. 105). The influence of these different artistic movements are eloquently synthesized by Jawlensky and transformed into a personal and very distinctive artistic expression. As the artist once wrote to a prominent art collector, ‘What you feel in front of my paintings is that which you must feel, and so it seems to you that my soul has spoken to yours—therefore it has spoken’ (quoted in James Demetrion, Alexej Jawlensky: A Centennial Exhibition, Pasadena Art Museum, 1964, p. 22).