Helene (Werefkin)

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Helene (Marianne von Werefkin)
Helene
Marianne von Werefkin , around 1909
Gouache on paper and card
23 x 18.5 cm

"Helene" is the title of a picture that the Russian artist Marianne von Werefkin painted around 1909. The work is part of a private collection .

Technology and dimensions,

The picture is a gouache on paper on cardboard , 23 × 18.5 cm. It has no signature or date.

iconography

Shown is Helene Nesnakomoff , the mistress of Alexei Jawlensky , which he in 1922 Wiesbaden married. When "Helene was ten years old in the fall of 1895", she was [...] accepted "into the house" of the Werefkin family on the Blagodat estate in Lithuania , "after the death of her stepfather the police soldier with us in the spot ".

Werefkin's studio house on the Blagodat estate in Lithuania. It is the only 19th century studio house in Lithuania

The summer residence Blagodat had a total area of ​​850 hectares and included the Vzuonélés, Mediniai and Mazelizkiai estates, the Skaistasilis forest and the Lukuo lake. The estate is located about seven kilometers northwest of the city of Utena , in the Kownow governorate . In winter the werefkins lived in Saint Petersburg .

Information board (Lithuanian, English, German) on the Blagodat estate in Lithuania, in the background the main house of the Werefkins

From then on, Helene was able to “live warm and full. The still child girl had to earn her food and shelter. It was an apprenticeship with Marianne's new maid Pascha. "

In 1896 she came to Germany “to personally attend to the Werefkin.” In Munich, Helene was entered on a “missing list” in the registry of the residents' registration office as the cook of the “Excell.” Werefkin. Although Jawlensky immortalized Helene in several pictures, little and contradicting information is known about this woman to this day. Her maiden name Nesnakomoff, which is an unknown in translation, determined her life like a signet . Helene remained largely unknown to her contemporaries, as a report by Elisabeth Erdmann-Macke makes clear: “In Munich [1911] we visited the painter Alexej von Jawlensky [...] together with his colleague Marianne von Werefkin. They had two studio apartments on the same floor. […] Hélène lived in a small adjoining room, a young, pretty person who quietly and unnoticed looked after the household and did all the daily work, but never sat at the table when guests were present […] In the small room […] There were many colorful children's drawings attached to the wall with thumbtacks . Little André , then six years old, Jawlensky's 'nephew', in reality his and Hélène's son, had painted them, […] there was always a little bit of a secret about these three people and their affiliation with one another. "

Painter and model

The painters of the Neue Künstlervereinigung München (NKVM) used nude drawing and nude painting . In their three exhibitions (1909–1911) they addressed the classic motif of the human figure. "The idea of ​​a rediscovered harmony between man and nature should be translated into a modern design language in the picture."

Adolf Erbslöh sat down for example. B. particularly deals with the large-scale female files of Pierre Girieud , with whom he had been friends since his trip to Paris in May 1910. He was also influenced by the nude painting of Georges Rouault and Henri Le Fauconnier .

Adolf Erbslöh: Girl with a Red Skirt , 1910

Around 1910 Erbslöh painted a series of monumental-looking female nudes. “His wife or other young women were his models for these full or half-length, standing, sitting or lying nudes.” They are among the most progressive works of his expressionist phase, such as B. the girl with the red skirt . The three basic colors yellow, red and blue dominate the picture. The figure is given stability by a black contour. It illustrates the painter's intention of two-dimensionality and thus complements the barely differentiated flat background. Johannes Eichner , the biographer of Gabriele Münter and Wassily Kandinsky , had already pointed out the source of modern painting among the artists of the NKVM in 1957 when he said: “Jawlensky was undoubtedly the most advanced when the group in Murnau started its work. He already knew how to paint in a modern way. He had learned the method of the Pont-Aven school of stretching the colored surfaces in contours.

Erbslöh's “files make it particularly clear how effective the suggestion and encouragement from Jawlensky was in this phase, with whom Erbslöh, along with his closest friend Kanoldt , who went in and out of the Erbslöh house almost every day, had the most intensive exchange. [...] The frequent visits, the appraisal of Erbslöh's paintings by Jawlensky, occasionally accompanied by his companion Helene (Erbslöhs called them both 'Lulu and Lala') […] point to important impulses that the 17-year-old was able to give It should be mentioned in this context that Jawlensky also encouraged the four years younger Benedictine monk Jan Verkade to paint nudes.

According to the catalog raisonné, Jawlensky depicted 16 female nudes in paintings and 139 in drawings. With two exceptions, Lisa Kümmel and Hanna Bekker vom Rath , these are mainly models with anonymous physiognomy . In normal portraits, Jawlensky depicts Helene's character traits always unmistakably with those of other people. There are only a few friends in his work whom he portrayed in a similarly recognizable manner. B. the wife of Alfred Kubin , Elisabeth Ivanovna Epstein , Alexander Sacharoff , Andreas Jawlensky or Nikita Werefkin . However, Helene's familiar facial features never appear in nudes in his catalog raisonné. All the more astonishing that Helene made herself available as a nude model for Werefkin in several gouaches and several drawings.

literature

  • Clemens Weiler : Marianne von Werefkin. In exh. Cat .: Marianne Werefkin 1860–1938. Municipal Museum Wiesbaden 1958, no p.
  • Brigitte Salmen (Ed.): Exh. Cat .: Marianne von Werefkin in Murnau, art and theory, role models and artist friends. Murnau 2002, p. 95, color illus. Cat. 48, ISBN 3-932276-14-0
  • Isabell Schenk-Weininger / Petra Lanfermann (eds.): Exh. Cat .: Marianne Werefkin, From the Blue Rider to the Great Bear. Municipal Gallery Bietigheim-Bissingen 2014, p. 72, cat. 32
  • 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 , pp. 8–19, here pp. 14–19; JSTOR 10.1163 / j.ctt1w8h0q1.7

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Bernd Fäthke: Alexej Jawlensky, heads etched and painted, The Wiesbaden years. Galerie Draheim, Wiesbaden 2012, p. 14 f, ISBN 978-3-00-037815-7
  2. ^ Marianne Werefkin: Letter to Mr. August Schädl, 1919. Archive Fondazione Marianne Werefkin , Ascona, p. 11.
  3. ↑ German: Bliss.
  4. ^ Marianne Werefkin: Letter to Mr. August Schädl, 1919. Archive Fondazione Marianne Werefkin , Ascona, p. 6.
  5. ↑ S. Kubickiené, VyzuonéliIiu Dvaras, Utenis, writing vom12.7.1994. The translation from Lithuanian comes from Stase Kuldasyte.
  6. ↑ Brigitte Roßbeck: Marianne von Werefkin, The Russian woman from the circle of the Blue Rider. Munich 2010, p. 53
  7. ↑ Alexej Jawlensky: Memorabilia In: Clemens Weiler (Ed.), Alexej Jawlensky, Heads-Face-Meditations. Hanau 1970, p. 106
  8. ↑ Bernd Fäthke: Marianne Werefkin. Munich 2001, p. 57, Doc. 7, ISBN 3-7774-9040-7
  9. ^ Elisabeth Erdmann-Macke: Memories of August Macke. Frankfurt 1987, p. 240.
  10. ↑ Rosel Gollek: The Blue Rider in the Lenbachhaus Munich. Catalog of the collection in the municipal gallery. Munich 1982, p. 388 ff.
  11. ↑ Beate Eickhoff: The act among the Munich artists. In exh. Cat .: Adolf Erbslöh the avant-garde maker. Von der Heydt-Museum, Wuppertal 2017, p. 162.
  12. ^ Nicole Hartje-Grave: Erbslöh and the French avant-garde. In exh. Cat .: Adolf Erbslöh the avant-garde maker, Von der Heydt-Museum Wuppertal 2017, p. 71.
  13. ↑ Brigitte Salmen: Adolf Erbslöh, Life and Creation to 1916. In: Karl & Faber (Ed.): Adolf Erbslöh 1881–1947, catalog raisonné of the paintings. P. 18
  14. ↑ Johannes Eichner: Kandinsky and Gabriele Münter, From the origins of modern art. Munich 1957, p. 89. "
  15. ↑ Lulu stands for Jawlensky. Because of his many affairs , he was seen as the male counterpart to the woman from Frank Wedekind's drama who lures men with sensuality in order to plunge them into ruin.
  16. ↑ "Lala" is a play on words relating to "Lulu".
  17. ↑ Brigitte Salmen: Adolf Erbslöh, Life and Creation to 1916. In: Karl & Faber (Ed.): Adolf Erbslöh 1881–1947, catalog raisonné of the paintings. P. 19
  18. ↑ Adolf Smitmans: Departure to the Whole. In: Adolf Smitmans: (Ed.): P. Willibrord Jan Verkade, artist and monk. Exhib. Cat .: Hohenkarpfen Art Foundation, Beuron 2007, p. 174 ff, Cat. No. 7.13 and Cat. No. 7.13, color illus. P. 118 f.
  19. ↑ Maria Jawlensky, Lucia Pieroni-Jawlensky and Angelica Jawlensky (eds.): Alexej von Jawlensky, Catalog Raisonné of the Oil Paintings Vol. 1–3, Munich 1991–1993
  20. ↑ Maria Jawlensky, Lucia Pieroni-Jawlensky and Angelica Jawlensky (eds.): Alexej von Jawlensky, Catalog Raisonné, The Watercolors and Drawings 1890-1938. Vol. 4, Munich 1998
  21. ↑ Bernd Fäthke: Alexej Jawlensky, heads etched and painted, The Wiesbaden years. Galerie Draheim, Wiesbaden 2012, p. 28, color illus. 31 and p. 4 b / w fig. 44, ISBN 978-3-00-037815-7
  22. ↑ Maria Jawlensky, Lucia Pieroni-Jawlensky and Angelica Jawlensky (eds.): Alexej von Jawlensky, Catalog Raisonné often the Oil Paintings Vol. 1, Munich 1991, Cat. No. 11, 13, 21, 156, 192, 195, 317 , 400, 583, 584.
  23. ↑ Maria Jawlensky, Lucia Pieroni-Jawlensky and Angelica Jawlensky (eds.): Alexej von Jawlensky, Catalog Raisonné of the Oil Paintings Vol., Munich 1991, Cat. No. 137
  24. ↑ Maria Jawlensky, Lucia Pieroni-Jawlensky and Angelica Jawlensky (eds.): Alexej von Jawlensky, Catalog Raisonné of the Oil Paintings Vol., Munich 1991, Cat. No. 196.
  25. ↑ Maria Jawlensky, Lucia Pieroni-Jawlensky and Angelica Jawlensky (eds.): Alexej von Jawlensky, Catalog Raisonné of the Oil Paintings Vol., Munich 1991, cat. No. 250.
  26. ↑ Maria Jawlensky, Lucia Pieroni-Jawlensky and Angelica Jawlensky (eds.): Alexej von Jawlensky, Catalog Raisonné of the Oil Paintings Vol., Munich 1991, cat.no. 306.
  27. ↑ Maria Jawlensky, Lucia Pieroni-Jawlensky and Angelica Jawlensky (eds.): Alexej von Jawlensky, Catalog Raisonné of the Oil Paintings Vol., Munich 1991, cat.no. 308.
  28. ↑ Isabell Schenk-Weininger (Ed.): Exh. Cat .: Marianne Werefkin, From the Blue Rider to the Great Bear. Städtische Galerie Bietigheim-Bissingen 2014, cat. 26 and 32, color illus. P. 72