Woman with forelock

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Jawlensky-woman-with-browlocke.jpg

Woman with a Forelock is the title of a painting by the German-Russian painter Alexej Jawlensky , which he painted in 1913. In 1949 it was acquired by the then museum director Clemens Weiler for the Wiesbaden Museum . It bears the inventory number M 387.

Technology and image carriers

The portrait “Woman with Forelock” is an oil painting on cardboard in portrait format, 67.5 × 50.4 cm. It is signed lower left in the picture 'A. Jawlensky ”and dated“ 1913 ”. Inscribed on the reverse (with black brush): “A. Jawlensky / 1913 ". The picture is listed in Weiler's “Catalog of Paintings” from 1959, in the Jawlensky Archive's 1991 “Catalog Raisonné”, 1997 in the Jawlensky inventory catalog of the Wiesbaden Museum, and in 2014 in the 2014 exhibition catalog “Horizont Jawlensky”.

Style change

The year 1913 brought a change in Jawlensky's painting 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 the 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. Cubism, as it had already encountered it in 1908 through Picasso and Derain , was now taken up, not applied from the outside as with so many, but raised to the principle of order. What previously surrounded the face as a cubic-square frame has now been brought in and thus necessarily transformed into the cross-shaped directions of movement inherent in the cube, whereby the translucent color had to take over the function of the depth dimension. The vertical was exaggerated by the triangular shape of the forehead, which was becoming more and more evident, while the horizontal was emphasized in the oversized eyes. "

"A tombstone is wrong"?

“The 'woman with a forelock' is Helene Nesnakomoff , who married Jawlensky on July 20, 1922 in Wiesbaden after 27 years of life together. Their son Andreas was 20 years old at the time. Helene is buried next to Jawlensky in the Russian cemetery in Wiesbaden . Although Helene von Jawlensky was immortalized in many pictures, little was known about this woman and very little was known. Her maiden name Nesnakomoff, which translates as 'an unknown woman', seems to have determined her life almost like a sign. Helene also remained largely unknown to Jawlensky's friends, as the report by Elisabeth Erdmann-Macke makes clear. “[…] In Wiesbaden, there are not many secrets in Jawlensky's life and work that are sometimes very difficult to unravel unknown. And so one registered very relaxed on a detailed press article about the incorrect spelling on the gravestone of Helene and Alexej Jawlensky in the Wiesbaden Russian cemetery. Its headline read: "A tombstone is wrong". This gravestone says that Helene was born in 1881. However, when a portrait entitled "Helene (fifteen years old), 1900" , which Jawlensky signed and dated himself , was shown to a large public at the great Jawlensky exhibition in Munich in 1983, many interested people in the Wiesbaden Museum asked whether the Gravestone is wrong or even the signature and the date on the Jawlensky picture are wrong? Because they had calculated: 1900 minus 15 results in a date of birth of 1885 for Helene. If the date of birth 1881 on the tombstone were correct, the information in the Jawlensky catalog of the Munich exhibition would not be correct. The latter depiction has since been supported by the Jawlensky exhibition in Wiesbaden in 2014, where the painting was also represented. The Munich dating "Helene (fifteen years old), 1900" was no longer accepted, but underwent a significant change and is now "around 1900". This change means not only for this painting: Strange hands are at work by Jawlensky. The artist's authorship of the date and signature is now in question.

literature

  • Clemens Weiler: Alexej Jawlensky. Cologne 1959.
  • Bernd Fäthke : Alexej Jawlensky, drawing-graphic documents. Exhib. Cat. Museum Wiesbaden 1983, p. 25f.
  • Bernd Fäthke: Jawlensky's "Lady with Forelock", the special picture for the 45th year of death of Alexej Jawlensky. , MS Museum Wiesbaden 1986, pp. 1-4.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Clemens Weiler: Alexej Jawlensky. Cologne 1959, p. 237, no.145.
  2. ↑ Maria Jawlensky, Lucia Pieroni-Jawlensky and Angelica Jawlensky (eds.): Alexej von Jawlensky, Catalog Raisonné of the oil-paintings. Vol. 1, Munich 1991, No. 584, p. 456.
  3. ^ Ingrid Koszinowski: Alexej von Jawlensky, paintings and graphic works from the collection of the Wiesbaden Museum Wiesbaden 1997, No. 16, p. 28.
  4. ↑ Clemens Weiler: Alexej Jawlensky Cologne 1959, p. 84
  5. ^ Elisabeth Erdmann-Macke: Memories of August Macke , Frankfurt 1987, p. 238 ff
  6. ↑ René Drommert: A gravestone is wrong. Alexej von Jawlensky and the difficulties with Russian names and dates. Die Zeit, October 27, 1967
  7. ↑ Exhib. Cat .: Alexej Jawlensky 1864-1941. Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich 1983, No. 3, p. 124
  8. ↑ Bernd Fäthke: Jawlensky's "Lady with Forelock" , The special picture for the 45th year of death of Alexej Jawlensky. MS Museum Wiesbaden 1986, pp. 1-4