Lot 71 Dα

With its luminous flowers on a dark ground, the “Großes Stillleben” offered here is distinguished by a delicate triad of red, pink and yellow tones. At the same time, the reduction of form coupled with the use of short, energetic brushstrokes is characteristic of the artist’s work. As Jawlensky writes in a letter of 1937 to Galka Scheyer, what he was concerned with in his floral still lifes was the representation of what he saw and, at the same time, 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).
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 his floral still lifes. Although they appear more or less sporadically in his oeuvre prior to 1934, the artist accorded them a central role in the second half of the 1930s. Similarly to his “Variationen”, whose origins lay in the view from the window of his house in St Prex, Jawlensky utilised the flower vases standing on the window sill of his studio for his floral still lifes. Bordering on abstract composition, Jawlensky repeatedly created variations on his small and large floral still lifes, causing a group of works to emerge that are extraordinarily significant as a whole.