Still life with apples (Jawlensky)

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Alexej von Jawlensky: Still life with apples (1908)

Still life with apples is the title of a painting by the German-Russian painter Alexej von Jawlensky , which he painted in 1908. In 1953 it was acquired by the museum director at the time, Clemens Weiler, for the Wiesbaden Museum . It bears the inventory number M 678.

Technology and image carriers

The “Still life with apples” is an oil painting on cardboard mounted on wood in an almost square format, 49 × 51.5 cm. It is signed in Cyrillic lower left “A. Jawlensky ”and dated“ 08 ”. Various stickers on the reverse, the oldest handwritten: Salon 1908-9. 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”.

The teachings of Gauguin and the Nabis

“In the spring of 1908, they [namely Jawlensky and Jan Verkade ] encountered a small Van Gogh exhibition in the Zimmermannschen Kunsthandlung [in Munich] . There Jawlensky acquired a beautiful landscape from van Gogh, which he loved very much, through the accommodating of the widow Theo van Gogh . In December 1907 the "Erznabi" Sérusier came to Munich and rented a studio there for three months. The teachings of Gauguin and the Nabis penetrated deeply into Jawlensky's work during those years. But despite all the inner kinship that bound him to these teachings, he never allowed himself to be seduced into a symbolist work . Again and again it was the still lifes in which he wanted to express what was vibrating in him by intensifying the color and concentrating the form. […] Jawlensky developed a completely different style in the Murnau years . He was the most advanced at the time when the group Marianne von Werefkin , Alexej von Jawlensky | Alexej Jawlensky and Gabriele Münter , Wassily Kandinsky started their work together. He outlined the surfaces with dark contours and was thus able to capture the entire composition in the surface. He not only reduced the landscape, but also the still lifes by simplifying the form more and more and limiting himself to a few strongly contrasting colors. Jawlensky, like the French Fauvists and above all André Derain as a result of the great Cézanne exhibition in Paris in 1907, took part in the shift towards the strict construction from which analytical cubism arose in France . Jawlensky built with the help of Cézanne and placed the colors next to each other in the spirit of Gauguin. But what he added is the heavy Russian saturation of the color. He never uses color decoratively, but always emphasizes emotions, is internally meaningful, and deeply saturated. "

Battle of shapes and colors

While the Münter was still alive, her biographer Johannes Eichner wrote : "Without a doubt, Jawlensky was the most advanced when the group started working in Murnau. He already knew how to paint in a modern way. He had learned the process of the Pont-Aven school, - to stretch the colored surfaces in contours. " And this is exactly what Jawlensky does in "'Stilleben mit Äpfeln" (Still Life with Apples) from 1908. It was new and revolutionary in the painting of those years and was in stark contrast to the impressionism of Liebermann , Corinth or Slevogt , who celebrated triumphs at the time. Münter and Kandinsky admired So Jawlensky. The widely traveled and worldly experienced Jawlensky had already left impressionism behind him in 1903, and he had only recently shed Neo-Impressionism . Now, in the run-up to Expressionism, he tried out color and form for their very own qualities. The three basic colors - yellow, red and blue - are weighed against their complementary colors - violet, green and orange - in our picture. Jawlensky sets the individual colors in contours and thus prevents them from escaping into the mix. They have to show their colors in the truest sense of the word "is actually misleading and belittles the picture content that Jawlensky wants to illustrate. In reality, Jawlensky stages a dramatic battle of shapes and colors for dominance in the picture, which makes the depiction as exciting as a medieval battle picture. Against all color logic, Jawlensky uses green, which owing to its passive character should actually lie like a deposit at the lower edge of the picture, overweight and in large numbers in the upper picture zone. The green is the only color in the picture that is not specified by a contour or defined by an internal shape. Thus it presents itself as an incredibly sluggish element. This brakes and clasps like tongs the vital composition, which develops diagonally from bottom left to top right. Jawlensky contrasts the green with a poisonous red-violet, which he shakes with zigzag shapes, as if struck by lightning. The activity of the red-violet is directed obliquely upwards through contours and adjacent dark colored areas. She drives and presses the fruit bowl into the tough green color field. On top of it lie the apples, whose yellow, bursting with energy, could burst the contours like chains at any moment, in order to flood and outshine the green and the overall picture. The red plays a subordinate role in the overall composition, as does the blue and its complementary color orange. These colors illustrate balance, harmony and togetherness in our picture. A light and a dark blue complement each other in a square order to form the pattern of the jug. Both shades of blue find their counter-sound in the two shades of orange of the almost circular apple that overlaps the jug. Our still life is actually an abstract picture, in which Jawlensky used nature as a pretext in 1908 to depict the interplay of forces between shapes and colors. Jawlensky repeatedly asserted that art can neither be learned nor taught and, for example, refused. B. from a professorship at the Bauhaus . Kandinsky was of a completely different opinion. He already illustrated this in 1912 with his book “On the Spiritual in Art”. In it he certainly processed observations that he made in Jawlensky's pictures. Our still life and his confession from 1938 to Jawlensky: "You taught me, make that abundantly clear."

literature

  • Clemens Weiler: Alexej Jawlensky. Cologne 1959, p. 278, no.720
  • Bernd Fäthke:, Alexej Jawlensky, drawing-graphic documents, exh. Cat .: Museum Wiesbaden 1983, p. 25 f
  • Bernd Fäthke, Jawlensky's "Stilleben mit Äpfeln", The special picture for the 45th year of death of Alexej Jawlensky, MS Museum Wiesbaden 1986, p. 4 f
  • Maria Jawlensky, Lucia Pieroni-Jawlensky and Angelica Jawlensky (eds.), Alexej von Jawlensky: Catalog Raisonné of the oil-paintings. Vol. 1, Munich 1991, No. 220, p. 187
  • Ingrid Koszinowski. Alexej von Jawlensky, paintings and graphic works from the collection of the Wiesbaden Museum Wiesbaden 1997, No. 3, p. 15 f

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Clemens Weiler: Alexej Jawlensky. Cologne 1959, p. 278, no.720
  2. ^ Maria Jawlensky, Lucia Pieroni-Jawlensky and Angelica Jawlensky (eds.): Alexej von Jawlensky: Catalog Raisonné of the oil-paintings. Vol. 1, Munich 1991, No. 220, p. 187
  3. ↑ Ingrid Koszinowski. Alexej von Jawlensky, paintings and graphic works from the collection of the Wiesbaden Museum Wiesbaden 1997, No. 3, p. 15 f
  4. ↑ Roman Zieglgänsberger (ed.): Exh. Cat .: Horizont Jawlensky 1900–1914, Alexej von Jawlensky in the mirror of his encounters, Museum Wiesbaden 2014, cat. No. 48, p. 299
  5. ↑ 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
  6. ↑ Clemens Weiler: Alexej Jawlensky. Cologne 1959, p. 63 ff
  7. ↑ Johannes Eichner: Kandinsky and Gabriele Münter, From the origins of modern art. Munich 1957, p. 89
  8. ↑ Bernd Fäthke: Jawlensky's "Stilleben mit Äpfeln", the special picture for the 45th year of death of Alexej Jawlensky. MS Museum Wiesbaden 1986, p. 4 f