Alexej von Jawlensky

Heinrich Campendonck (a gift from the artist in 1929)
Edith Campendonck-van Leckwijck (by descent from the above)
Sale: Christie's, Amsterdam, 22nd May 1991, lot 538
Purchased at the above sale by the present owner

Maria Jawlensky, Lucia Pieroni-Jawlensky & Angelica Jawlensky Bianconi, Alexej von Jawlensky, Catalogue raisonné of the Oil Painting 1914-33, London, 1992, vol. II, no. 1308, illustrated in colour p. 447

Executed on linen finish board. The board is stable and UV examination reveals no signs of retouching. All four edges are unevenly cut and there are artist pinholes to all four corners. There is some minor frame rubbing to the edges with minor associated paint losses. This work is in overall good condition.
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NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

'Human faces are for me only suggestions to see something else in them – the life of colour, seized with a lover’s passion' (quoted in Clemens Weiler, Jawlensky: Heads, Faces, Meditations, New York, 1971, p. 12).

At the outbreak of World War I, Jawlensky left Germany and lived in exile in Switzerland until 1921, leading a more secluded life. In St. Prex as well as in Wiesbaden, where he returned to in 1922, Jawlensky developed a distinct style. He began to work in series, visiting a specific motive time and again, allowing him to experiment and to modify an ongoing theme. He increasingly reduced shapes and moved towards abstraction without ever completely abandoning figurative representation.

In his series of heads Jawlensky gradually eliminated the individuality and character of his sitters and began to stylize and abstract the human features. In his mature œuvre, Jawlensky arrived at a style through which he conveyed a sense of harmony and universal spirituality reminiscent of icons. A growing interest in Indian philosophy and the life of Indian yogis appears to have had a strong influence on the series, as suggested by the meditative closed eyes and the overall reduction of the composition to the purest pictorial elements of colour and line. Jawlensky’s form of abstraction also appears to be inspired by the multi-dimensional approach of the Cubists, whose fragmented and highly abstracted compositions he had seen in Paris. As Clemens Weiler noted: ‘Cubism, with which he became acquainted in 1910, supplied Jawlensky with the means of simplifying, condensing and stylizing the facial form even further, and this simplified and reduced shape he counterbalanced by means of even more intense and brilliant colouring. This enabled him to give these comparatively small heads a monumentality and expressive power that were quite independent of their actual size’ (quoted in Clemens Weiler, Jawlensky: Heads, Faces, Meditations, New York, 1971, p. 14).

With its grid of predominantly horizontal and vertical lines and brightly painted blocks of colour, the present work is a wonderful example from Jawlensky’s series of Abstract Heads. The present work was given as a gift to the painter Heinrich Campendonk, a member Der Blaue Reiter group, from 1911 to 1912.