Lot 278 Nα

No other artist has occupied himself with the human countenance in such a diverse manner over such a long period of time. Beginning with a basic framework of facial features, Jawlensky oscillates between chalk, gouache, watercolours and oils, between reserved nuances of colours and a glaring variety of hues, between a fine linearity alternating with broad two-dimensionality and between mimetic reproduction and systematised form. Beginning with the expressive portraits around 1910, Jawlensky's heads became subject to a remarkable development leading from the Mystical Heads to the Saviour's Faces and Abstract Heads - and from these to the Meditations. With this the face becomes a mask: eyes and mouth, nose and ears increasingly become a geometrically stylised abstraction in order to transpose the traditional face into a universalising and nonetheless solemn visual concept, comparable to a sacred icon or an Egyptian mummy portrait. Stylistically, Jawlensky's “Helle Erscheinung” is a formative example of the beginning of this extended development: the face before a neutral background fills the format of the image, the hair now functions solely to provide a frame, the suggestion of a throat and shoulder serve to traditionally contextualise the composition. The paint is no longer applied with an impasto technique, but extremely thinly, in glazes. The artist envisioned his usually stylised, female portraits slightly in profile or, as in this case, nearly in full face; the almost geometrically applied fields of colour give the face an individual aura without any real connection to a person. Jawlensky's heads correspond to a conceptual way of thinking: with his variations on a theme, Jawlensky passed through the various phases of his development to arrive at a radicalism without parallel in the history of traditional portrait painting.