ALEXEJ JAWLENSKY, his quotes on painting art and life – from memories, letters, writings and talks by the Russian artist in Blaue Reiter
Alexej Jawlensky (1864 – 1941), his quotes om painting art by the Russian-born painter-artist who got engaged in the German artist-group ‘Blaue Reiter’ / Blue Rider in Munich. Together with Kandinsky, Gabriele Münter and his first ‘wife’ (not married) and art muse Marianne von Werefkin – artist of Russian origin -, Jawlensky painted a lot in open air near Murnau. After 1927, in Switzerland, he became severely ill and could not move his arms without terrible pains. So he decided to paint series small works format on paper: his famous series ‘Variations’ and ‘Abstract Heads’: visual statements with a spiritual meaning.
* At the bottom biography story & art links for Alexej Jawlensky.
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Jawlensky: ‘Abstract Head’, 1923 |
Alexej Jawlensky, artist quotes on life & his statements on art and spirituality
– I was taken to see the World Exhibition in Moscow (in 1880, ed.). I found it all very boring. But when I came to a section devoted to art – there were only paintings, and this was the first time of my life (he was 16 years old, ed.) I had seen paintings – I was so deeply affected that it was a case of Saul becoming Paul. It was the turning point of my life. Even since then art has been my ideal, my holy of holies, that for which my entire soul and my entire self yearn.
* Jawlensky, source of the artist quotes on his paintings, portrait art and ‘Variations’: ‘Lebenserinnerungen’ (Memories, fh) 1938, by Alexej von Jawlensky; as quoted in ’Alexej von Jawlensky’, Museum Boymans-van-Beuningen, Rotterdam; exhibition catalogue 25/9 – 27/11-1994, p. 20. (Russian painter, artist of Blaue Reiter; famous for his early colorful expressionistic art and later spiritual art; more biography facts at the bottom)
– Since 1929 I have suffered from an extremely painful disease (arthritis deformans) which gets worse every year. Little by little my arms and hands have become stiff and bent and I have terrible pain. This stiffness in my elbows and wrists has tremendously hindered my painting and I have had to find a new technique. 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 motif the schema of a face, fh). And now I leave these small but, to me, important works to the future and to people who love art.
* source of the artist quotes on his paintings, portrait art and ‘Variations’: ‘Lebenserinnerungen’ 1938 (Memories, fh), by Alexej von Jawlensky; as quoted in ’Alexej von Jawlensky’, Museum Boymans-van-Beuningen, Rotterdam; exhibition catalogue 25/9 – 27/11-1994, p. 23.
– In the spring of 1911 Marianne von Werefkin (his study-mate in Russia and his first ‘wife” (not married, but Von Werefkin was his great inspiration / art muse for 15 years, ed.) Andrei, Helene and I went to Prerow on the Baltic. For me that summer meant a great step forward in my art. I painted my finest landscapes there as well as large figure paintings in powerful, glowing colours and not at all naturalistic or objective. I used a great deal of red, blue, orange, cadmium yellow and chromium-oxide green. My forms were very strongly contoured in Prussian blue, and came with tremendous power from an inner ecstasy. ‘der Buckel’, ‘Violetter Turban’, ‘Selbstporträt’… …were created in this way. It was a turning-point in my art. It was in these years, up to 1914, just before the war, that I painted my most powerful works, referred to as the pre-war works.
* A. Jawlensky, source of the artist quotes on his paintings, portrait art and ‘Variations’: his memoirs, written in 1938; as quoted in ’Alexej von Jawlensky’ Museum Boymans-van-Beuningen, Rotterdam; 25/9 – 27/11-1994, pp. 77/275.
– At first I intended to carry on working in St. Prex (in Switzerland, around 1914 – 1915, fh) in the same way I had been working in Munich. But something inside me prevented me from painting colourful, sensuous pictures. Suffering had changed my soul, telling me to find other forms and colours to express what was on my mind.
* source of the artist quotes on his paintings, portrait art and ‘Variations’: ‘Köpfe, Gesichte, Meditationen’, Clemens Weiler; as quoted in ’Alexej von Jawlensky’, Museum Boymans-van-Beuningen, Rotterdam; 25/9 – 27/11-1994, p. 149.
– I painted these ‘Variations’ for some years and then I found it necessary to find form for the face, because I had come to understand that great art can only be painted with religious feeling. And that, I could only bring to the human face. I understood that the artist must express through his art, in forms and colours, the divine in him. Therefore a work of art is God made visible and art is ‘a longing for God’.
* source of the artist quotes on his paintings, portrait art and ‘Variations’: a letter to the Fauvist Dutch painter, father Willibrord Verkade, 12 june 1938; as quoted in ’Alexej von Jawlensky’, Museum Boymans-van-Beuningen, Rotterdam; 25/9 – 27/11-1994, p. 150.
– I am now mainly painting faces and landscapes; I am obsessed day and night by the vision of faces and colours. And the spiritual vision is my mystical world.
* source of the artist quotes on his paintings, portrait art and ‘Variations’: a letter to his brother Dimitri, probably around 1917/18; as quoted in ’Alexej von Jawlensky’, Museum Boymans-van-Beuningen, Rotterdam; 25/9 – 27/11-1994, p. 150.
– It was very tiny, our house (in Switzerland, lake Genova, where Jawlensky concentrated himself on the view around his house for years – this was after 1914, when he and his wife Marianne von Werefkin departed from Kandinsky and Gabriele Münter in Murnau – Jawlensky painted here more then 400 ‘Variations on a landscape theme’, fh), and I had no room for my own, only a window, which I could call mine. But I was so gloomy and unhappy in my soul after all those dreadful experiences, that I was quite content to sit at the window and quietly collect my thoughts and feelings. I had a bit of paint but no easel, so I went into Lausanne – twenty minutes on the train – and bought a small easel from a photographer… …It was highly unsuitable for painting but for more than twenty years I have painted my best work on that little easel.
* source of the artist quotes on his paintings, portrait art and ‘Variations’: his memoirs, written in 1938; as quoted in ’Alexej von Jawlensky’, Museum Boymans-van-Beuningen, Rotterdam; 25/9 – 27/11-1994, p. 186.
– I knew that I must paint not what I saw, but only what was in me, in my soul. Figuratively speaking, it was like this: In my heart I felt as if there were an organ, which I had to sound. And nature, which I saw before me, only prompted me. And that was a key that unlocked this organ and made it sound… …They are songs without words.
* source of the artist quotes on his paintings, portrait art and ‘Variations’: his memoirs, written in 1938; as quoted in ’Alexej von Jawlensky’ Museum Boymans-van-Beuningen, Rotterdam; 25/9 – 27/11-1994, p. 186.
– I sat in my studio and painted, and did not need Nature as a prompter (after 1921, when he painted the series ‘Abstrakter Kopf’ –abstract Head, fh). I only had to immerse myself in myself, pray, and prepare my soul to a state of religious awareness. I painted many, many ‘Faces’.
* Jawlensky, source of the artist quotes on his paintings, portrait art and ‘Variations’:’Alexej von Jawlensky’, Museum Boymans-van-Beuningen, Rotterdam; 25/9 – 27/11-1994, p. 186.
– My art in the last period (till 1937, then Jawlensky couldn’t paint anymore because of severe arthritis, fh) has all been in small format, but my paintings have become even deeper and more spiritual, speaking purely through colour… …And now I leave these small – but to me – important works to the future and to the people who love art.
* source of the artist quotes on his paintings, portrait art and ‘Variations’:’Alexej von Jawlensky’, Museum Boymans-van-Beuningen, Rotterdam; 25/9 – 27/11-1994, p. 249.
– Every artist works within a tradition. I am a native of Russia. My Russian soul has always been close to the art of old Russia, the Russian icons, Byzantine art, the mosaics in Ravenna, Venice, Rome, and to Romanesque art. All these artworks produced a religious vibration in my soul, as I sensed in them a deep spiritual language. This art was my tradition.
* source of the artist quotes on his paintings, portrait art and ‘Variations’: his letter to the National Socialist State cultural administration (to ask permission to exhibit his work, which was turned down, fh) 1939; as quoted in ’ Alexej von Jawlensky’, Museum Boymans-van-Beuningen, Rotterdam; 25/9 – 27/11-1994, p. 24.
artist Alexej von Jawlensky, art links for biography facts and information about the Russian painter
* biography facts of the Russian painter artist Alexej Jawlensky, on Wikipedia
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