Alexej von Jawlensky Lot n° 49

Alexei von Jawlensky Still life: Azaleas in pink vase 1936 Oil on linen textured paper, drawn by the artist on card and edged with black ink border 19 x 12.5 cm (card 32.2 x 24.9 cm) Framed. Monogrammed 'A.J.' in black lower left and dated '36' lower right. Dated 'IV.1936' and inscribed 'N 10.' on the cardboard in black ink, inscribed "A.Jawlensky IV. 1936" and "N.10" on the reverse in black ink by Lisa Kümmel and titled by the artist in blue ink. - In good condition. M. Jawlensky/Pieroni-Jawlensky/A. Jawlensky 1917 Provenance Helene von Jawlensky, Wiesbaden 1938; estate of the artist; private collection; Wolfgang Wittrock Kunsthandel, Düsseldorf; Galerie Gunzenhauser, Munich; private property Southern Germany Exhibitions Düsseldorf 1986 (Wolfgang Wittrock Art Dealers), Alexej Jawlensky. Paintings 1908-1937, cat. No. 39 with colour illustrations p. 71; Munich 1987 (Galerie Gunzenhauser), Alexej Jawlensky. Ölbilder, cat. no. 16; Munich 1988 (Galerie Gunzenhauser), Jawlensky, Münter, Kandinsky und der Blaue Reiter, cat. No. 13 with colour illustration o.S. Alongside his famous "Abstract Heads" and the "Meditations" that emerged from them, Alexej von Jawlensky's flower still lifes heralded the last major phase of his creative work. While they appeared rather sporadically in his oeuvre before 1934, the artist gave them an almost equal status in the second half of the 1930s. Similar to his "Variations", which were created during the First World War and have their starting point in the view from the same window of his house in St. Prex, Jawlensky chose the flower vases standing on the window sill of his studio as a motif for his flower still lifes. Bordering on abstract composition, he varied a basic formal pattern time and again in these small-format flower still lifes, which together reveal a serial principle. Our fine still life with flowering azaleas in a pink vase is characterized by a luminous triad of red, blue and green tones. Characteristic is the simplification of forms using mostly vertical brushstrokes. As Jawlensky wrote in a letter to Galka Scheyer in 1937, in his flower still lifes he was concerned with reproducing what he saw and at the same time what his soul saw (cf. M. Jawlensky/Pieroni-Jawlensky/A. Jawlensky, Alexej von Jawlensky. Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings, Volume Three 1934 - 1937, p. 13).