Portrait of Sacharoff

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Portrait of Sacharoff
Alexej Jawlensky , around 1913
Oil painting
53.8 × 49.5 cm
Wiesbaden Museum, Wiesbaden

Link to the picture
(please note copyrights )

Portrait Sacharoff is the title of a painting by the German-Russian painter Alexej Jawlensky , created around 1913. In 1954 it was acquired by the museum director at the time, Clemens Weiler, for the Wiesbaden Museum . It bears the inventory number M 687.

Technology and image carriers

The "Portrait of Sacharoff" is an oil painting in portrait format - 53.8 × 49.5 cm on cardboard. It is in the picture below left: “A. Jawlensky ”signed. "On the reverse a colored sketch of a head, various stamps, inscriptions (numbers) and stickers." The picture is recorded in Weiler's "Catalog of Paintings" from 1959, in the Catalog raisonné , in the 1997 inventory catalog of the Wiesbaden Museum and in the exhib. Cat .: Horizont Jawlensky 1914.

Iconography and image description

“The dancer Alexander Sacharoff is probably shown . […] Drawn dance studies as well as various paintings, including “White Feather” and “ Red Lips ” (both 1909), prove, in addition to written evidence, that Alexander Sacharoff repeatedly served as the artist's model. A clearer proof of the designation has not yet been provided. Merely the fact that male heads rarely appear in Jawlensky's work gives the naming of this head as well as other youthful heads of this time Alexander Sacharoff some probability. ”“ The 'Portrait of Sacharoff' itself is one of Alexej von Jawlensky's figurative works. […] Within the heavily colored. Portraits of this time, the gloomy 'Bildnis Sacharoff' occupies a special position: an angular face under curly hair looks past the viewer in half profile, the back of the head already looks like a slightly schematized classical antiquity. Colored shadows structure the cheeks and upper lip, burning eyes show willpower, dark outlines chisel distinctive features. Overall, the approximately 53 by 49 centimeter oil portrait [...] appears ascetically strict. "

Back picture

“On the back of the work painted in 1913 there is another picture, the sketch of a head. In strong colors, the painter has broken down the facial features into surface segments, obviously in direct confrontation with Cubism . Puzzling, because there is no such work in Jawlensky's oeuvre. Apart from the obvious assumption that the painting materials were scarce at the time, nothing is known about the head. It is interesting, however, that the abstraction in this heavily colored sketch is much more advanced than in the paintings that were created at the same time. It is only in Jawlensky's late work that the progressive reduction, admittedly, develops in a completely different way than in this sketch. So the painter later understood the essential facial features quite differently, vertically. Here they are diagonal, pointed and bulky. "

Style change 1913

“The year 1913 already saw a change in his [Jawlensky's] style. He gave up the square format. Its formats became taller and narrower. The faces are elongated. The color withdraws, it becomes more subdued. The blue begins to predominate. Even the red and green become more subtle, and the cross is already beginning to appear on the face through the horizontal line of the eyes and the vertical line of the nose. ”From 1913 onwards, a visible change took place in Jawlensky's painting. “You can clearly see how the colors gradually lose their earlier vitality. The tones get darker. ”The“ dull, hard, little able to move brown, in which the red sounds like a barely audible simmering ”, now floods a number of paintings. Gray tones also interfere, "which have no purely active, moving force." The shapes are becoming increasingly angular. The colors and shapes suggest that Jawlensky was in a state of mind that could not have been light-hearted this year. In this regard, an observation from Clothilde Derp's time is instructive : “During the family dramas that break out quite frequently, Jawlensky came to Sacharoff to complain. Alexander's diplomatic neutrality helped calm the minds. ”[…] At the end of 1913 the two were so divided that Werefkin lost all hope of ever being able to achieve the harmony she wanted with Jawlensky. She packed [...] her suitcase and drove to her brother Peter in Lithuania with the firm decision not to return to Germany. [...] Jawlensky was stuck with his "relatives" Helene, Andreas and Maria in Munich without any financial resources. We know from Wassily Kandinsky that Jawlensky tried to find sources of money in January / February 1914 in order to survive the separation from Werefkin. All the more astonishing that Jawlensky was able to afford a trip to Bordighera, one of the first-class seaside resorts on the Ligurian Sea, in the spring of 1914 . Only a group of brightly colored paintings indicate that he may have been there. Only on-site archives provide certainty. The "Journal de Bordighera" reported for February 12, 1914: Jawlensky as a newcomer from Munich, who had stayed in the German guesthouse "Villa Constantia". For the next five weeks, until at least March 19, he was there - without Helene and Andreas. […] Jawlensky seems to have felt very comfortable in Bordighera, which is on the railway from Marseille to Genoa between Monaco and Sanremo . His paintings, which were created there, radiate satisfaction and joyful zest for life. They document a lively climax between two lows in his emotional biography, but he treats the Bordighera episode in the memoirs with complete discretion.

literature

Clemens Weiler: Alexej Jawlensky. Cologne 1959, p. 84

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The painting “Bildnis Sacharoff” was published as a “Sturm-Postcard” as early as 1913, see: Hauswedell & Nolte: Modern Art of the 19th and 20th Centuries, auction 398, December 9, 2006, ill. P. 376, no. 1118, p. 377
  2. ↑ a b Ingrid Koszinowski: Alexej von Jawlensky, paintings and graphic works from the collection of the Wiesbaden Museum Wiesbaden 1997, p. 30
  3. ↑ Clemens Weiler: Alexej Jawlensky. Cologne 1959, p. 237, no.143
  4. ↑ Maria Jawlensky, Lucia Pieroni-Jawlensky and Angelica Jawlensky (eds.): Alexej von Jawlensky, Catalog Raisonné of the oil-paintings. Vol. 1, Munich 1991, No. 601, p. 475, color illus. 466
  5. ^ Ingrid Koszinowski: Alexej von Jawlensky, paintings and graphic works from the museum's collection. Wiesbaden 1997, cat. No. 18, p. 30, color illus. P. 30
  6. ↑ See: Bernd Fäthke: Alexej Jawlensky, Drawing-Graphics-Documents. Exhib. Cat .: Museum Wiesbaden 1983, p. 38 ff, Cat, No. 2
  7. ↑ a b Birgitta Melten: Riddle about the cubist head. A two-faced jawlensy: a hidden sketch on the back of a painting. Wiesbadener Tagblatt July 25, 1997, p. 17
  8. ↑ At that time Jawlensky had, through Werefkin, "the funds that were necessary for a carefree artist's life." Cf. Elisabeth Erdmann-Macke: Memories of August Macke. Frankfurt 1987, p. 238 ff
  9. ↑ Clemens Weiler: Alexej Jawlensky. Cologne 1959, p. 84
  10. ^ <Wassily Kandinsky: About the spiritual in art, especially in painting. Munich 1912, (2nd edition), (The first edition was published by Piper in Munich at the end of 1911 with imprint 1912), p. 85
  11. ↑ Wassily Kandinsky: About the spiritual in art, especially in painting. Munich 1912, (2nd edition), (The first edition was published by Piper in Munich at the end of 1911 with imprint 1912), p. 75
  12. ↑ Alexander Sacharoff: Spirituality. In exh. Cat .: The Sacharoffs, two dancers from the Blue Rider's circle. Paula Modersohn-Becker Museum, Bremen 2002, p. 161
  13. ↑ Angelika Affentranger-Kirchrath: Exh. Cat .: Jawlensky in Switzerland 1914–1921, encounters with Arp, Hodler, Janco, Klee, Lehmbruck, Richter, Teubler-Arp. Kunsthaus Zürich 2000, p. 22
  14. ↑ Kandinsky to Herwarth Walden , February 3, 1914, Sturm-Archiv, Berlin State Library
  15. ^ Ralf Nestmeyer: Cinque Terre and Liguria. Munich 2000, p. 81
  16. ↑ Mario Marcenaro: Bordihera e il Museo Nazionale di Studi Bibliotheca dell'Istituto Inter Liguri as Clarence Bicknell al Renewal attuale. Instituto Internazionale di Studi Liguri. Bordighera 1998, pp. 8 ff, Fig. 10
  17. ↑ Jawlensky's name was by transcription of the manuscript in print garbled , "Mr. Alexis v. Jacobinsky, Munich ”.
  18. ↑ Bernd Fäthke: Jawlensky and his companions in a new light Munich 2004, p. 168 ff