Lot Essay
The present work depicts Murnau, a small market town in Upper Bavaria, where Jawlensky spent the summer of 1908 with his family, Marianne von Werefkin and his fellow artists Kandinsky and Gabriele Münter. The location of the town in the rolling hills by the Staffelsee, and the surrounding moor with a view of the Wetterstein Alps to the south, provided a compelling visual environment for the artists.
J. T. Demetrion writes "the artist's stature and importance are established early in his career by the heads, still-lifes and landscapes he painted from 1907 to 1913...These paintings are unique in that the discords of German Expressionist colour are fused with a French Fauvist attitude towards mankind which is essentially benevolent and optimistic. The psychological tensions, the anguish of introspection, and the romantic sentimentality of Germans like Kirchner, Heckel or Mueller are repudiated by Jawlensky. Vibrant yellow-greens clash with brilliant orange-reds and the colour areas become even more intense when enclosed by black, green or blue contours." (Alexej Jawlensky, A Centennial Exhibition, Exh. cat., Pasadena, 1964, p. 11).
Anne Mochon continues "Jawlensky had been in Matisse's studio during 1907, where he had adopted the French painter's post-Fauve technique of containing flat areas of colour within simple contour lines. At the same time, his contact with the painters Paul Sérusier and Jan Verkade introduced him to the Symbolist concept of 'synthesis', the reduction and abstraction of colour and form in painting to convey essential meaning" (Gabriele Münter: Between Munich and Murnau, Exh. cat., Harvard, 1980, p. 27).
Murnau works are housed in the Kunstmuseum, Berne, the Museum Kochel am See, and the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich.
J. T. Demetrion writes "the artist's stature and importance are established early in his career by the heads, still-lifes and landscapes he painted from 1907 to 1913...These paintings are unique in that the discords of German Expressionist colour are fused with a French Fauvist attitude towards mankind which is essentially benevolent and optimistic. The psychological tensions, the anguish of introspection, and the romantic sentimentality of Germans like Kirchner, Heckel or Mueller are repudiated by Jawlensky. Vibrant yellow-greens clash with brilliant orange-reds and the colour areas become even more intense when enclosed by black, green or blue contours." (Alexej Jawlensky, A Centennial Exhibition, Exh. cat., Pasadena, 1964, p. 11).
Anne Mochon continues "Jawlensky had been in Matisse's studio during 1907, where he had adopted the French painter's post-Fauve technique of containing flat areas of colour within simple contour lines. At the same time, his contact with the painters Paul Sérusier and Jan Verkade introduced him to the Symbolist concept of 'synthesis', the reduction and abstraction of colour and form in painting to convey essential meaning" (Gabriele Münter: Between Munich and Murnau, Exh. cat., Harvard, 1980, p. 27).
Murnau works are housed in the Kunstmuseum, Berne, the Museum Kochel am See, and the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich.