Background
Alexej von Jawlensky was born on March 13, 1864, in Torschok, Tver District, Russian Federation. He was the fifth child of Georgi von Jawlensky and his wife Alexandra (née Medwedewa). His family was aristocratic.
Saint Petersburg, Russian Federation
Alexej von Jawlensky studied at the Russian Academy of Arts.
Alexej von Jawlensky was born on March 13, 1864, in Torschok, Tver District, Russian Federation. He was the fifth child of Georgi von Jawlensky and his wife Alexandra (née Medwedewa). His family was aristocratic.
While still attending cadet school he discovered the arts, and by obtaining a transfer as a young lieutenant to St. Petersburg, he was able to study at the Academy of Fine Arts and under the important Russian realist painter Ilya Repin (called the Russian Courbet). There he met the painter Marianna von Werefkin, the daughter of a general, who was to devote a large part of her life to encouraging and furthering Jawlensky's career as an artist.
In 1896, by then a captain, he left the service and moved with Werefkin and Helen Nesnakomoff (her servant and later Jawlensky's wife and mother of his son Andrej) as well as two other painter friends to Munich to attend the private art school of Anton Azbé. Here he met and began a lifelong friendship with Wassily Kandinsky, who was to become one of the founders of abstract (non-objective) painting.
Extended travels in Europe and especially through France introduced Jawlensky to modern art developments. He met Henri Matisse (in 1907 he worked for a while in Matisse's studio), the symbolist painters Paul Sérusier and Jan Verkade (later to become monk Willibrord in the artistically important monastery of Beuron), as well as the Fauvist Kees van Dongen, among others. After his return to Munich he met Paul Klee and Franz Marc and joined them and Kandinsky in the most avant-garde artist group in southern Germany, the Neue Künstler Vereinigung München (New Artist Association Munich). Kandinsky's long time friend Gabriele Münter, Alfred Kubin, Adolf Erbslöh, the Russian Bechtjeleff, and others belonged to his circle, in which Werefkin played an important intellectual role.
With the beginning of World War I, Jawlensky as a Russian had to leave Germany, settling in Switzerland. In 1916 he met Emmy (whom he called Galka) Scheyer, who became his student and shortly thereafter his impresario, organizing exhibitions of his works in Germany. In 1924 she formed the "Blue Four" consisting of Jawlensky, Kandinsky, Klee, and Lyonel Feininger to introduce the works of these artists to the United States. She organized, primarily in California, a number of exhibits, gave lectures, and represented the artists until her death in 1945. In 1921 Jawlensky had moved to Wiesbaden in Germany and, his friendship with Werefkin broken. In 1929 he began to suffer from arthritis which forced him to paint with both hands since he could no longer hold a brush; he was unable to paint at all after 1937. His art was declared "degenerate" by the Nazis in 1937 and 72 of his works were confiscated from collections of German museums.
Jawlensky's life work contained only three themes: still lifes, landscapes, and portraits. Convinced that the visual representation of inner experiences is the goal of the arts, he consistently sought a synthesis between the external world and the experience of the inner world of the artist. Painting in strong colors, he abbreviated the natural forms until his landscapes became colorful visions and his still lifes manifestations of serene spaces. During his time in Switzerland he painted a series of abstracted landscapes which he called "Songs without words, " indicating that not an objective reproduction of natural vision but an invocation of feelings created by the natural settings was intended. Having studied the works of van Gogh and Matisse, Gauguin and Cezanne and familiar with the works of the symbolist painters as well as with Cubism and Fauvism, Jawlensky created his own forms, which were strong-colored expressions of his emotions and of his spiritual strivings and convictions.
He is primarily famous for the large number of portraits, which by 1916 were reduced to heads and which after 1918 became abstractions of faces. In the last form a harmonious U-form on the lower part provides the base while mouth, eyes, and forehead furnish a horizontal structure and the nose divides as a vertical the face into a lighter and a darker side. The eyebrows provide a gentle bow, and the face appears to look inwards with closed eyes. In the last works, often called "Meditations", nose, eyes, mouth, and forehead form a Greek cross with one small speck of light centered on the forehead, reminding the viewer of the sign of wisdom found on Byzantine and Russian icons of the Virgin Mary. Although consistently counted among the Expressionists, Jawlensky is the only artist to have created a meditative art: this was his unique contribution to modern art.
Berglandschaft mit Häusern
1912Young Girl with Peonies
1909Pale Woman with Red Hair
1912Self-portrait
1912Mystical Head
1917Stilleben mit Weinflasche
1904The Blue Mantilla
1913The old Jew
1893Japanese Flower
1913Spanish Girl
1912Head of a Woman
1911Rote Giebel - Rote Dächer
1910Landschaftstudie - Dorfstrasse
1908Head of a woman, Femina
1922Seated Woman
1911The thinking woman
1912Schokko with Red Hat
1909Head in Black and Green
1913Still Life with Begonia
1911Still Life with Bottle, Bread and red Wallpaper with Swallows
1915Sitzende Frau
1909Astonishment
1919Still-life with flowers and oranges
1909Half-nude figure with long hair sitting bent
1910Saviour's Face: Distant King - Buddha II
1921Self-portrait
1905Still-life with jug
1913Variation: Field of Tulips
1916Oberstdorf - Mountains
1912Meditation
1936Infantin (Spanierin)
1913Portrait of Alexander Sakharoff
1909Saviour's face: Martyr
1919Red Blossom
1910The church in Prerow
1911Still Life
1912Der violette Turban
1911Variation
1918Roter Abend - Blaue Berge
1910Variation
1916Autumn Sound
1918Bauer
1912Variation: Träumerei
1916Stilleben mit gestickter Decke
1910Blauer Berg
1910Bretonische Bäuerin
1905Mystischer Kopf: Frauenkopf - gelber Mund
1917Variation: Glorreicher Abend - Sommersegen II
1917Schokko with Wide-Brimmed Hat
1910Hélène
1911Woman with a green fan
1912Nude
1912Mystischer Kopf: Frauenkopf auf blauem Grund
1917Variation: Zärtlichkeiten
1917Portrait of a Girl
1909Head in blue
1912Mystischer Kopf: Frauenkopf auf rotem Grund
1917Young Girl with a flowered hat
1910Saviour's Face - Christ
1920Cottage in the Woods
1903The Hunchback
1905Liegendes Mädchen
1917Landschaft, Genfer See
1915Variation: Sonnenaufgang
1918Blumen in einer Vase
1918Portrait of a Woman
1912Blaue Vase mit Orangen
1908
Quotations:
"My art in the last period has all been in small format, but my paintings have become even deeper and more spiritual, speaking truly through colour. Feeling that because of my illness I would not be able to paint very much longer, I worked like a man obsessed on these little 'Meditations' (a long series of small paintings he made during the last years of his life, with as main motif the schema of a face, ed.). And now I leave these small but, to me, important works to the future and to people who love art.
"I knew that I must paint not what I saw, but only what was in me, in my soul."
"The artist expresses only what he has within himself, not what he sees with his eyes."
Alexej Georgewitsch von Jawlensky was a key member of the New Munich Artist's Association (Neue Künstlervereinigung München), the Blue Rider (Der Blaue Reiter) group and later the Blue Four (Die Blaue Vier).
In 1922 Alexej von Jawlensky married Helen Nesnakomoff. They had a son.