Alexej von Jawlensky - Variation 1916 N. 4 - image-1

Lot 53 Dα

Alexej von Jawlensky - Variation 1916 N. 4

Auction 1155 - overview Cologne
19.06.2020, 18:00 - Modern and Contemporary Art - Evening Sale
Estimate: 90.000 € - 120.000 €
Result: 112.500 € (incl. premium)

Alexej von Jawlensky

Variation 1916 N. 4
1916

Oil on light card, laid down on fibreboard (47.8 x 34.7 cm) 39.8 x 27.3 cm Framed. Monogrammed 'A.J.' in black lower left. - Inscribed verso "A. Jawlensky. 1916. N. 4." by Lisa Kümmel. - The corner with drawing pin holes. The lower edge with a short surface scratch and tiny losses of colour, with a minor retouching.

Jawlensky referred to the first major series of motifs he created during his Swiss emigration, beginning in 1914, as “Variationen über ein landschaftliches Thema”. Here, as though recurring back to a Cézanne-like manner of working creatively by choosing repetition, abstraction and the limitation of the motif, Jawlensky followed his own principles of synthesis. The inner logic behind this new type of simplification and formalisation would become defining for his late work, and we still find it moving today on account of its breadth of expression. Each “Variation” enchants us with its extremely individual as well as groundbreaking artistic sense.
“Jawlensky's 'Variationen' of the years 1914-17 are characterised by clear elements of contemplation and absorption, which became more concentrated in his later work. The painter was interested in the chromatic equivalents of the inner resonance of natural phenomena. Here the principle of the 'open series' [Katharina Schmidt] emerges for the first time. A series of over one hundred vertical-format paintings on cardboard, all roughly equal in size, revolves almost exclusively around a single landscape motif. His distancing himself from the horizontal format of the traditional landscape image is indicative. Everything is directed towards a stronger concentration of the spiritual. The eruptive tonalities of the earlier pictures, which still recall the Fauves, lightens into a - sometimes almost pastel-like - transparent collective resonance. The references to objective elements sparingly integrated into the pictures occasionally call to mind Kandinsky's early 'Improvisationen'. It also seems possible to detect an echo of Delaunay's 'Disques simultanés'. There can be no doubt that musical reverberations also resonate in these 'Variationen'. Jawlensky had a deep personal affinity to music, and it was provided with new impulses precisely during his years in Switzerland, through his contact with Igor Stravinsky. Ideas about the 'Gesamtkunstwerk' - whose Romantic and Symbolist roots stretch back deep into the 19th century - were prevalent in the aesthetics of 'Der Blaue Reiter'. Scriabin's 'Prometheus' [5th Symphony, 1910] attempts to establish a synchrony between the musical element and alternating coloured lighting, and it was a topic of discussions among artists at that time. [...] The primeval ground of music, in the sense of a mystical-inward overview of the world, always resonated in the painter […].” (Michael Semff, Variationen-Meditationen: Zum Spätwerk Jawlenskys, in: Bildzyklen, exhib. cat., Staatsgalerie Stuttgart 1987, pp. 17/18).

Catalogue Raisonné

Maria Jawlensky/Lucia Pieroni-Jawlensky/Angelica Jawlensky Bianconi Bd. IV, 2287 (Addendum) with colour illus. p. 425

Certificate

We would like to thank Angelica Jawlensky Bianconi, Muralto, for kind advice.

Provenance

Richard Gerson, Berlin (late 1930s); Private collection, Israel; Kunsthaus Nagel, Stuttgart, Auction 29 Mar. 1996, Lot 3077; Private collection, Hesse