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Lot Essay
Painted in 1917, Mysticher Kopf is one of the earliest works of this sought-after series. This picture dates from the very first year that Jawlensky painted either his Mysticher Kopf or his Heilandsgesicht works. Jawlensky was one of the great pioneers of the modern series, taking a deliberately limited number of themes and examining them again and again in new ways and in new lights in order to derive new meaning or potential from the image. This had begun with his landscape Variations (see lot 26) which had taken a deliberately musical title to reflect the musicality of the series process, of the different colours and appearances of the same view. However, it was in the human face that Jawlensky found his greatest theme, and he would explore it in the Mysticher Kopf, Heilandsgesicht and Abstrakter Kopf series for the rest of his life. As he said, 'the face is not just a face but the whole universe. In the face the whole universe becomes manifest' (Jawlensky, quoted in C. Weiler, Jawlensky: Heads, Faces, Meditations, London, 1971, p. 56). In this way, Mysticher Kopf is a meditation upon existence and beauty, a focus for contemplation that plays a similar role to the Orthodox icons of the artist's native Russia and to the Buddhist art that later came to interest and influence him so much.
It was one face in particular that played a role in inspiring the Mysticher Kopf pictures - that of Emmy 'Galka' Scheyer, a great enthusiast of Jawlensky's work whom he met at this time. Scheyer would famously become an advocate for Jawlensky's work, and the work of some of his friends, in the United States, and formed the 'Blue Four' as a movement precisely for this reason. This allowed her to promote and sell the works of Jawlensky as well as Kandinsky, Feininger and Klee. When the catalogue raisonné of Jawlensky's work was prepared, the authors were unable to inspect the work in the flesh and cautiously ascribed to it a date of 1919. However, it was found that the artist had inscribed and dated the work 1917, a date that the authors have now corroborated.
It was one face in particular that played a role in inspiring the Mysticher Kopf pictures - that of Emmy 'Galka' Scheyer, a great enthusiast of Jawlensky's work whom he met at this time. Scheyer would famously become an advocate for Jawlensky's work, and the work of some of his friends, in the United States, and formed the 'Blue Four' as a movement precisely for this reason. This allowed her to promote and sell the works of Jawlensky as well as Kandinsky, Feininger and Klee. When the catalogue raisonné of Jawlensky's work was prepared, the authors were unable to inspect the work in the flesh and cautiously ascribed to it a date of 1919. However, it was found that the artist had inscribed and dated the work 1917, a date that the authors have now corroborated.