Alexej von Jawlensky

Russian, 1864–1941

BiographyBorn on 26 March 1864, Jawlensky grew up in White Russia and was educated for a military career in Moscow, where he rose to the rank of lieutenant. Denied permission to attend the Art Academy simultaneously with his military training, Jawlensky transferred to St. Petersburg in 1889, where he studied with Il'ja Repin (1844-1930). In 1891 he met Marianne von Werefkin (1860-1938), a Realist painter who became his companion until 1921. In 1896 they moved to Munich, where Jawlensky met Kandinsky. In the summers Jawlensky traveled throughout Europe with Werefkin, and a young assistant Hélène Nesnakomoff. The artist encountered a wide variety of emerging art practices and artistic theories, including the paintings of Van Gogh and Gauguin in Paris, and the mystical theories of the Nabis. The summers of 1908 and 1909 were spent in Murnau with Kandinsky and Gabriele Münter, with whom Jawlensky founded the Neue Künstlervereinigung München. The years 1911 and 1912 were especially productive, and his landscapes and portraits were exhibited with works by Paul Klee and Franz Marc (1880-1916) at the Blaue Reiter exhibitions. In or after 1914, Jawlensky was forced to emigrate from Russia to St. Prex on Lake Geneva, where he painted Variations, an increasingly abstract series of views from his window. In 1916 the artist met Emmy Scheyer, whom he used as a model for his Mystical Heads (1917-19). That series of paintings, along with the Savior's Faces of 1918-20 and the Constructivist (or Abstract) Heads of 1921-35, includes some of Jawlenksy's best known works.

Jawlensky settled in Wiesbaden in 1921, the year of a successful exhibition arranged in that city by Galka Scheyer. In 1922 he married Hélène Nesnakomoff, and began a professional collaboration with their son Andreas. Crippled by arthritis by 1929, Jawlensky sought relief in Bad Wörishofen and developed new, small-format "meditations" which he alternated with large-format still lifes of flowers. In 1933 Jawlensky was forbidden by the National Socialists to exhibit his work in Germany. His paintings in public collections were confiscated in 1937 and two were included in Hitler's Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art) exhibition held in Munich. After 1938 Jawlensky was completely paralyzed; he died on 15 March 1941 in Wiesbaden.

For a detailed biography, see Armin Zweite, ed., Alexej Jawlensky 1864-1941 (exh. cat., Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich, 1983), pp. 14-23.