Alexej von Jawlensky

Dr Ferdinand Ziersch, Wuppertal
Sale: Stuttgarter Kunstkabinett, 33. Auktion 1959, lot 360
Private Collection, U.S.A.
Thence by descent to the present owner circa 1978

Bern, Kunsthalle; Dusseldorf, Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen and Hamburg, Kunsthalle, Alexej von Jawlensky, 1957-58, no. 7 (no. 8 in Bern; titled Italienerin and as dating from 1906)
New York, Leonard Hutton Galleries, Der Blaue Reiter, 1963, no. 77
London, Marlborough Gallery, International Expressionism, Part I, 1968, no. 19, illustrated in the catalogue

Clemens Weiler, Alexej von Jawlensky. Der Maler und Mensch, Wiesbaden, 1955, no. 8, illustrated (titled Italienerin and as dating from 1906)
Clemens Weiler, Alexej Jawlensky, Cologne, 1959, no. 25, illustrated p. 228 (titled Frauenkopf and as dating from 1906)
Lothar-Günther Buchheim, Der Blaue Reiter, Feldafing, 1959, illustrated in colour p. 39
Maria Jawlensky, Lucia Pieroni-Jawlensky and Angelica Jawlensky, Alexej von Jawlensky. Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings, 1890-1914, London, 1991, vol. I, no. 332, illustrated p. 281

Painted circa 1910, Kopf einer Italienerin is one of Jawlensky’s most expressive early portraits, a genre that was to occupy a central position in his œuvre. In the years leading up to the First World War the artist executed an important series of heads and busts (fig. 1), which reflect his fundamental debt to Fauve art, while showing fully developed features of Jawlensky’s unique, decidedly personal style. Created at the time when Jawlensky’s portraits usually depicted young girls holding their dolls and women in exotic costumes or fashionable hats, the present depiction of a half-nude stands out as one of his more daring paintings of the time. In the following years he gradually abandoned these brilliantly coloured, highly expressive portraits in favour of the stricter, more geometrically composed ones.

Looking back at the pre-war years, the artist himself identified this phase in his career as crucial: ‘I painted my finest… 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… It was a turning point in my art’ (quoted in ‘Memoir dictated to Lisa Kümmel, 1937’, in M. Jawlensky, L. Pieroni-Jawlensky and A. Jawlensky, op. cit., p. 31). This range of bright, vivid colours is present in Kopf einer Italienerin: the bright colouration of the woman’s body, executed in a combination of vibrant green yellow and red tones is amplified by contrast with a deep blue background. In a composition dominated by broad, free brushstrokes the woman’s facial features, carefully contoured in black, stand out, emphasising the beauty of her lips, her elongated almond-shaped eyes and eyebrows.

In both its choice of theme and style of execution, the present work draws on a rich tradition of modernist painting, including the art of, among others, Van Gogh, Matisse and Van Dongen (fig. 2). The short, thick brush strokes and the juxtaposition of brighter and cooler tones reflect the influence of Van Gogh and Cézanne. In 1905 Jawlensky’s works were exhibited at the Salon d’Automne in Paris alongside those of the Fauve artists, who were to play the most important role in the development of Jawlensky’s style in the following years. His abandoning of representational function of colour in favour of a more spontaneous, expressive one is strongly reminiscent of Matisse’s portraits at the height of his Fauve period (fig. 3).

Volker Rattemeyer wrote about the influences of Fauve artists visible in Jawlensky’s portraits executed around this time, including the present work: ‘The manner in which the vivid colours and blue/black contours begin to focus on specific features – eyes, nose and mouth – seems to have been inspired by Van Dongen. In contrast to the overt sensuality of Van Dongen’s female portraits, Jawlensky’s are dominated by an introspective seriousness’ (Volker Rattemeyer, Alexej von Jawlensky (exhibition catalogue), Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, Rotterdam, 1994, p. 77). Despite its bright, vibrant colouration and the lack of clothing, the facial expression of the present portrait reveals this introspective character. The woman’s head, slightly tilted down, and her gaze directed away from the viewer show the sitter in a melancholy, sensual mood. The nude bust of Kopf einer Italienerin further accentuates her seductive look, and this contrast between the sitter’s sensuality and the vivid tonality with which she is depicted make this one of Jawlensky’s most stunning portraits of the pre-war period.

Peter Vergo wrote: ‘During the years around 1912, Jawlensky devoted himself increasingly to the treatment of a single theme, that of the female face […]. Conventional portraiture is abandoned in favor of what are in essence representations of a type […]. Like so many Expressionist artists, he was not interested in capturing a precise physical likeness […]. Rather, his paintings draw attention to the abstract, expressive character of the face, the representation of which is raised to a level of the utmost stylisation’ (P. Vergo, The Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, Twentieth-Century German Painting, London, 1992, pp. 148-51). In Kopf einer Italienerin this stylisation results in a portrait that is wonderfully vibrant and bold, the epitome of Jawlensky’s most daring avant-garde work.

 

Fig. 1, Alexej von Jawlensky, Schokko (Schokko mit Tellerhut), circa 1910, oil on board laid down on canvas (sold: Sotheby’s, New York, 5^th November 2003, lot 20)
Fig. 2, Kees van Dongen, Femme au grand chapeau, 1906, oil on canvas, Private Collection (sold: Sotheby's, London, The Tabachnick Collection, 24th June 1997, lot 18)
Fig. 3, Henri Matisse, Portrait de Madame Matisse. La Raie verte, 1905, oil on canvas, Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen
Fig. 4, Alexej von Jawlensky, Halbakt, circa 1912, oil on board (formerly in the Beck Collection; sold: Sotheby’s, London, 8^th October 2002, lot 13)