Ave Maria (Werefkin)
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| Ave Maria |
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| Marianne von Werefkin , 1927 |
| Tempera painting on cardboard |
| 75 cm × 57 cm cm |
| Fondazione Marianne Werefkin , Ascona |
Ave Maria is the title of a painting that the Russian artist Marianne von Werefkin painted in 1927. The work belongs to the holdings of the Fondazione Marianne Werefkin in Ascona and has the inventory number 0-0-60.
Technology and dimensions
It is a tempera painting on cardboard , 75 × 57 cm.
iconography
A narrow nocturnal alley is shown. It is lined left and right by three to four-story houses. Only in the left foreground is a smaller building that has a window with folding shutters above the ground floor under the roof . Two outside lamps illuminate the scene, one on the front left of the house and a second on the corner of the fourth house on the right. The alley leads to the portal of a church. This has a small bell tower whose dome-like roof carries a cross . Is shown Ernst Alfred Aye as a priest before a House of Pleasure.
The temptation
Five people bring the picture to life. In the left foreground, two elderly women are talking, one standing in the open, illuminated door of her house, the other on the street. There are two young women in front of the next three-story house. One sits on the bottom step, the second stands upright a little higher. Both have red flowers in their hair and, by looking, show a visible interest in the priest , who is steadfastly and purposefully striving towards the church on the opposite side of the street. He doesn't look at either woman.
The title Ave Maria , which Werefkin gave to this painting, is Sibylline . In view of the juxtaposition of the two women with the cleric, one can assume that it is a metaphor for the temptation of Saint Anthony , to whom "the devil appeared in the form of one or more beautiful women."
A famous illustration can be found e.g. B. Michelangelo , who was inspired for his picture by an etching by Martin Schongauer . Other well-known pictorial representations come from Hieronymus Bosch and Matthias Grünewald at the Isenheimer Altar . The latter influenced several Expressionist artists , notably Max Beckmann , Paul Klee and August Macke . Werefkin's painting thus represents a further expressionist aftermath of the great, well-known Antonius experiments in art history.
Shape and color
The closely lined up houses give the alley the character of a deep ravine that tapers towards the church from a central perspective . The vanishing point is roughly in the middle of the portal. The sky can be seen at the upper edge of the picture, it narrows downwards like a funnel and, like the alley, also faces the church. The painter made the night sky unusually red. It looks as if the church roof is on fire, they are licking the cross white-hot. Further up, the red changes to a black-gray. One might suspect that it was smoke and soot rising. From the right, bluish, finger-like winds flood in narrow streams into the troubled color scene. A bat flutters ahead of them, wings spread .
Building on van Gogh and his color theories, Werefkin used all three basic colors yellow, red and blue together with their complementary colors violet, green and orange - and supplemented them with the two "non-colors" black and white according to Van Gogh's method, whose correct mastery for him " Brain work ”meant. Complementary and iconologically very closely related are the bright white church and the priest in black robe . A poisonous red-changing light catches him and throws his figure, meaningfully enlarged, as a blue shadow on the house wall. Ernst Alfred Aye , Werefkin's accomplice in art, served as a model for the priest .
literature
- Clemens Weiler : Marianne von Werefkin. In: exhib. Cat .: Marianne Werefkin 1860–1938. Municipal Museum Wiesbaden 1958
- Bernd Fäthke: Marianne Werefkin. Munich 2001. ISBN 3-7774-9040-7
- Brigitte Roßbeck: Marianne von Werefkin, The Russian from the circle of the Blue Rider. Munich 2010.
- Isabell Schenk-Weininger (Ed.): Exh. Cat .: Marianne Werefkin, From the Blue Rider to the Great Bear. Municipal Gallery Bietigheim-Bissingen 2014.
- Bernd Fäthke : Marianne Werefkin: Clemens Weiler's Legacy. In: Marianne Werefkin and the Women Artists in her Circle. (Tanja Malycheva and Isabel Wünsche eds.), Leiden / Boston 2016 (English), pp. 8–19, ISBN 978-9-0043-2897-6
Individual evidence
- ^ Hiltgart L. Keller: Antonius d. Size In: Reclam's Lexicon of Saints and Biblical Figures. Legend and representation in the fine arts. Stuttgart 1968, p. 41
- ^ Mathias Mayer: This work anticipates everything that is terrible. FAZ of July 9, 2016.
- ↑ Wassily Kandinsky: About the spiritual in art, especially in painting. Munich 1912, (2nd edition), p. 80 and note 1 (the first edition was published by Piper in Munich at the end of 1911 with the imprint 1912).
- ↑ Vincent van Gogh: Complete Letters, To the Family, To Friends and Acquaintances. In d. Translated by Eva Schumann. Edited by Fritz Erpel, Bornheim-Merten 1985, Vol. 4, p. 89