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Lot Essay
This work bears the Lisa Kümmel inventory inscription of 1937-39 on the reverse.
When the First World War began, Jawlensky was forced, as a Russian national, to leave Germany with his family. Having been at the epicentre of the Munich art scene for almost two decades, the sudden isolation of his new lodgings in Saint-Prex in Switzerland came as a shock. Being uprooted so violently and suffering various family tragedies, Jawlensky found his art, which had reached an almost furious, burning vitality in its Expressionist manner, was no longer appropriate to his feelings. His new solitude nurtured his already great interest in spirituality - he was reading yogic literature and seeking forms of meditation, and painting his Variation works became a form of meditation in themselves. He later recalled this period, and the great changes it provoked in his art, in his dictated memoirs:
'It was very tiny, our house, and I had no room of 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 just 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 for four francs. He had used it to stand his photographs on. It was highly unsuitable for painting but for more than twenty years I have painted my best work on that little easel. In the beginning at Saint-Prex I tried to continue painting as I had in Munich, but something inside me would not allow me to go on with those colourful, powerful, sensual works. I realized that my soul had undergone a change as a result of so much suffering and that I had therefore to discover different forms and colours to express what my soul felt.
'I began my so-called 'Variations on a Landscape Theme', which was the view from my window - a couple of trees, a path, and the sky. I started trying to express through painting what I felt nature prompting me to say. By means of hard work and tremendous concentration I gradually found the right colours and form to express what my spiritual self demanded.' (Jawlensky, quoted in Maria Jawlensky, Lucia Peroni-Jawlensky and Angelica Jawlensky, (ed.) 'Memoir dictated to Lisa Kümmel, Wiesbaden, 1937', pp.25-33 in Alexej von Jawlensky: Catalogue Raisonnée of the Oil Paintings: Volume I 1890-1914, London, 1991, p.32).
A related work of circa 1915 entitled Variation: Gartenweg (Sonntagsgruppe Nr 13) is part of the Galka Scheyer Collection at the Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena.
When the First World War began, Jawlensky was forced, as a Russian national, to leave Germany with his family. Having been at the epicentre of the Munich art scene for almost two decades, the sudden isolation of his new lodgings in Saint-Prex in Switzerland came as a shock. Being uprooted so violently and suffering various family tragedies, Jawlensky found his art, which had reached an almost furious, burning vitality in its Expressionist manner, was no longer appropriate to his feelings. His new solitude nurtured his already great interest in spirituality - he was reading yogic literature and seeking forms of meditation, and painting his Variation works became a form of meditation in themselves. He later recalled this period, and the great changes it provoked in his art, in his dictated memoirs:
'It was very tiny, our house, and I had no room of 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 just 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 for four francs. He had used it to stand his photographs on. It was highly unsuitable for painting but for more than twenty years I have painted my best work on that little easel. In the beginning at Saint-Prex I tried to continue painting as I had in Munich, but something inside me would not allow me to go on with those colourful, powerful, sensual works. I realized that my soul had undergone a change as a result of so much suffering and that I had therefore to discover different forms and colours to express what my soul felt.
'I began my so-called 'Variations on a Landscape Theme', which was the view from my window - a couple of trees, a path, and the sky. I started trying to express through painting what I felt nature prompting me to say. By means of hard work and tremendous concentration I gradually found the right colours and form to express what my spiritual self demanded.' (Jawlensky, quoted in Maria Jawlensky, Lucia Peroni-Jawlensky and Angelica Jawlensky, (ed.) 'Memoir dictated to Lisa Kümmel, Wiesbaden, 1937', pp.25-33 in Alexej von Jawlensky: Catalogue Raisonnée of the Oil Paintings: Volume I 1890-1914, London, 1991, p.32).
A related work of circa 1915 entitled Variation: Gartenweg (Sonntagsgruppe Nr 13) is part of the Galka Scheyer Collection at the Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena.