Alexej von Jawlensky - Stilleben N. 21 - image-1
Alexej von Jawlensky - Stilleben N. 21 - image-2
Alexej von Jawlensky - Stilleben N. 21 - image-1Alexej von Jawlensky - Stilleben N. 21 - image-2

Lot 339 Dα

Alexej von Jawlensky - Stilleben N. 21

Auction 1099 - overview Cologne
01.12.2017, 18:00 - Modern Art
Estimate: 70.000 € - 90.000 €
Result: 74.400 € (incl. premium)

Alexej von Jawlensky

Stilleben N. 21
1936

Oil on canvas, mounted on card 17 x 12.9 cm Framed. Monogrammed in red 'A. J.' lower left and dated '36' lower right. Signed, dated and titled 'A. Jawlensky 1936. II. N 21.' in black India ink on the card verso. - Minor rubbing in right margin, otherwise in excellent condition.

Along with his famous “Abstrakte Köpfe” and the “Meditationen” that developed out of them, Alexej von Jawlensky ushered in the last great period of his work with numerous still lifes of flowers. Although they appear more or less sporadically in his oeuvre prior to 1934, Jawlensky accorded them almost equal standing in the second half of the 1930s.
Similarly to the “Variationen” he created during the World War I, whose origins lay in his view from a single window of his house in St Prex, Jawlensky repeatedly turned his gaze to the flower vases standing on the window sill of his studio (see reference photo) for his floral still lifes. As with his previous themes, Jawlensky varied a basic formal pattern again and again in his small-format still lifes of flowers, in which a serial principle is once again recognisable.
The still life offered here is dominated by an intense chromatic triad of red, blue and yellow, which corresponds with an arrangement consisting of three vases varying in size and shape. The simplification of the forms accompanied by the use of primarily vertical brushstrokes is characteristic. As Jawlensky writes in a letter of 1937 to Galka Scheyer, what he was concerned with in his floral still lifes was simultaneously depicting what he saw and what his soul caught sight of (see M. Jawlensky/Pieroni-Jawlensky/A. Jawlensky, Alexej von Jawlensky: Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings, Volume Three 1934 - 1937, p. 13).

Catalogue Raisonné

M. Jawlensky/L.Pieroni-Jawlensky/A. Jawlensky 1830 with colour illus. p. 212

Provenance

Galerie Koch, Hanover (1979); in private collection since, Rhineland