City in Lithuania
City in Lithuania is the title of a painting that the Russian artist Marianne von Werefkin painted in 1910. The work belongs to the holdings of the Fondazione Marianne Werefkin (FMW) in Ascona . It has the inventory number FMW-0-0-30. The corresponding sketch, a colorful gouache , is also in the FMW collection in the sketchbook with the inventory number FMW b / 15.
Technology and dimensions
The painting is a tempera painting on cardboard , 56 × 75.5 cm.
iconography
As is so often the case with Werefkin's paintings, this picture also contains hints and mysterious symbols that are sometimes difficult to interpret. It is at least clear that by emphasizing the “non-colors” black and white, the painter created a relationship between the woman dressed in black on the path and the high white tower on the right on the horizon. Other colors, since they were not clearly articulated by the painter, obviously do not play any special role. Similar to black and white, Werefkin created another dual tone in the picture, namely that of light and shadow. While the city with the white tower lights up in the sun and spreads cheerfulness, the rest of the picture conveys oppressive desolation, as if it were shaded by clouds. On the unadorned meadow area, dead trees stretch their spindly, leafless branches towards the sky. On the path that seems icy, the old woman, leaning on a stick, moves forward with great strides. Her goal is - this is what the artist suggests with her painting - the church with the red and gold domed roofs.
Separated from the path, Werefkin depicts two women, who are also old, at the bottom right of the picture. They sit motionless on a bench in the shade of a large property and apathetically watch the passer-by on the way. A richly carved wooden gate that is locked completes the scene. It cannot be explained, remains a mystery.
Vievis
The "City in Lithuania" belongs to a group of paintings that were created in Lithuania in 1909 and 1910, when Werefkin traveled to Lithuania alone, without Jawlensky , after the first exhibition by the New Artists' Association in Munich . She lived with her brother Peter in Kaunas until Easter 1910 , who was then governor there. During a lecture on 23 May 2007 in the art-historical institute of the University in Vilnius trailheads participants discovered that Werefkin in her paintings with the anonymous designation "city in Lithuania" , the city Vievis represented, which is about halfway between Vilnius and Kaunas. The church on the right horizon is the Orthodox Church of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary , which was built in 1842-1843 after its predecessor was destroyed by fire in 1812 by Napoleon's Grande Armée . A comparison of today's church with the one on the painting shows that the one Werefkin saw was more splendid. She painted them equipped with red and gold domed roofs and a very high white tower similar to a landmark . Thus, Werefkin's presentation proves to be an interesting contemporary document, because the former church was again badly damaged during the First World War. It was then rebuilt in a simpler form and could be consecrated in 1923.
literature
- Clemens Weiler : Marianne Werefkin 1860–1938. Exhib. Cat .: Municipal Museum Wiesbaden 1958
- Bernd Fäthke: Marianne Werefkin and her influence on the Blue Rider. In: exhib. Cat .: Marianne Werefkin, paintings and sketches. Wiesbaden Museum 1980
- Bernd Fäthke: Marianne Werefkin. Munich 2001, p. 128 f, fig. 133, ISBN 3-7774-9040-7
- 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
- ↑ Wassily Kandinsky: About the spiritual in art, especially in painting: Munich 1912, (1st edition), (The first edition was published by Piper in Munich at the end of 1911 with imprint 1912), p. 80
- ↑ Bernd Fäthke: Marianne Werefkin. Munich 2001, p. 160, fig. 179, ISBN 3-7774-9040-7