Self-Portrait (Werefkin)

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Self-Portrait I (Marianne von Werefkin)
Self-portrait I.
Marianne von Werefkin , 1910
Tempera on paper and cardboard
51 × 34 cm
Municipal gallery in the Lenbachhaus , Munich

The self-portrait I of Marianne of Werefkin is a known expressionist paintings from the year 1910. It marks her artistic career turning away from her realistic painting , still the 19th century and their teacher Ilya Repin was associated. According to art historians, the picture is one of the painter's most important works. Today it belongs to the collection of the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus in Munich .

description

The painting is made using the painting technique tempera on paper and cardboard and has the dimensions 51 × 34 cm.

With a stern look, the viewer in three-quarter profile is turned towards the face of a 50-year-old woman who has nothing of vanity, which does not gloss over or hide anything and openly shows the traces of what has been experienced. But it also symbolizes the new self-confidence that Marianne won by Werefkin after they started in 1906 after ten year break to paint and their painted with dark colors realistic style that was still facing the 19th century and their teacher Ilya Repin recalls , could overcome. Her last self-portrait in a sailor's blouse (69 × 51 cm, oil on canvas , today in the Fondazione Marianne Werefkin - Museo communale d'arte moderna, Ascona) dates back to 1893. After that, she took a break from painting and occupied herself with the Encouragement of her friend and pupil Alexej von Jawlensky theoretically trained and developed into an expressionist painter. From 1910 she was at the height of her artistic career.

The bright colors of this self-portrait are reminiscent of her new artistic role models, whose works she met on a trip to Paris in 1906. It was the Fauves , but also Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin . The somewhat rough brushstroke is particularly reminiscent of van Gogh's painting style. Marianne von Werefkin made herself beautiful for this picture. She wears a fashionable red hat with a flower, the clothes on the chest below the neck are also red, but above all her cheeks, her lips and especially the impressive red eyes with small pupil openings , which in connection with the circumflex-shaped eyebrows make an extremely strict, seem to convey an almost demonic look. She writes about the colourfulness of her painting: “The more strongly colored an impression, the less a real form is possible.” Alexej von Jawlensky managed to create an equal self-portrait only two years later after several attempts .

The eyes are the most noticeable thing in the picture. They are at the center of the composition and have a special meaning. Marianne von Werefkin represented her own conception of painting; it is their philosophy of knowing seeing . She wrote: “The world of the artist is in his eye, which in turn creates his soul. It is the artist's highest duty to raise this eye in order to achieve a fine soul. ”In retrospect, art history has recognized the visionary nature of its art.

Exhibitions

  • Marianne Werefkin - From the Blue Rider to the Big Bear. April 12 to July 6, 2014, Städtische Galerie Bietigheim-Bissingen
  • Marianne Werefkin - From the Blue Rider to the Big Bear. July 20 to October 5, 2014, Böttcherstraße museums in Bremen

literature

  • Clemens Weiler : Marianne Werefkin 1860–1938. Exhib. Cat .: Municipal Museum Wiesbaden 1958
  • Bernd Fäthke: Marianne Werefkin, Life and Work 1860–1938. Prestel, Munich 1988, p. 117 f.
  • Laima Laučkaitė-Surgailienė: trips to Lithuania . Translation from the Lithuanian by Cornelius Hell. In: Nicole Brögmann: Marianne von Werefkin: oeuvres peintes 1907 - 1936 . Lausanne: Neumann Foundation; Gingins, 1996, pp. 93-101 ISBN 2-88453-023-1
  • Hildegard Möller: painters and muses of the blue rider. Piper, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-492-05017-3
  • Birgit Poppe: I am me. The women of the Blue Rider. DuMont, Cologne 2011, ISBN 978-3-8321-9359-1
  • 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
  • Roman Zieglgänsberger, Annegret Hoberg, Matthias Mühling (eds.): Lebensmenschen - Alexej von Jawlensky and Marianne von Werefkin , exhibition catalog. Municipal gallery in the Lenbachhaus and Kunstbau, Munich / Museum Wiesbaden, Munich a. a. 2019, p. 40 f. and Cat. 1, ISBN 978-3-7913-5933-5 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hildegard Möller: Painters and Muses of the Blue Rider. Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-492-05017-3 , p. 140.
  2. ↑ Katja Behling, Anke Manigold: The Malweiber. Intrepid women artists around 1900 (= Insel Taschenbuch. 4225). Abbreviated paperback edition. Insel-Verlag, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-458-35925-8 , p. 110.
  3. ↑ 1906 not in 1905 Werefkin traveled to France with Jawlensky. Here Jawlensky erred in his memoirs. See: Bernd Fäthke, Werefkin and Jawlensky with their son Andreas in the “Murnauer Zeit”, in exhib. Cat .: 1908–2008, 100 years ago, Kandinsky, Münter, Jawlensky, Werefkin in Murnau, Murnau Castle Museum 2008, p. 44
  4. ^ Marianne von Werefkin: Letters to a stranger. 1901-1905. (1903). Edited by Clemens Weiler. Du Mont Schauberg, Cologne 1960, OCLC 249894221 .
  5. ↑ Birgit Poppe: I am I. The women of the Blue Rider. Cologne 2011, p. 129 f.