VON JAWLENSKY, ALEXEJ
1867 Twer/Moscow–1941 Wiesbaden

Title: Meditation.
Date: 1935.
Technique: Oil on paper with linen embossing.
Mounting: Laid down on card (31.5 x 24cm).
Depiction Size: 18 x 14 cm.
Notation: Monogrammed and dated lower left and right: A.J. 35. Additionally signed, dated and inscribed verso centrally on the card: A. Jawlensky 1935 N 131 J.
Frame: Framed (36 x 31cm).



Provenance:
- - Galerie Scheyer, Hollywood, CA (1935, directly from the artist)

- Foreclosure auction, San Francisco, 1954, lot 9, no. 76

- Landau Galleries, Los Angeles (acquired from the previous owner)

- Sotheby's London, 28.6.1961, lot 51

- Kunstkabinett Hanna Bekker vom Rath, Frankfurt am Main

- Hans Steinbrenner Collection, Frankfurt am Main

- Jakob Steinbrenner Collection, Munich

- Galerie Meyer-Ellinger, Frankfurt a. M. (acquired in 2000)


Literature:
- Jawlensky, Maria/Pieroni-Jawlensky, Lucia/Jawlensky, Angelica: Alexej von Jawlensky - Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings, Vol. Three 1934-1937, Munich 1993, cat. rais. no. 1622



- Jawlensky's "Meditationen" ("meditations"), reduced to the essentials, testify to a mysterious magic and move the viewers in a special way

- Significant late work from his famous series

- Timeless visual language between icon painting and modernism



Particularly in the late 1930s, when he was already marked by illness, he created—with an almost religious fervor—a distinctive pictorial type that remains inseparably associated with his name to this day. Emerging from an intensive engagement with portraiture, Jawlensky arrived at a fundamental reflection on the image itself—a process that ultimately led him to the icon in its true, religious sense. The Meditations are an expression of his deeply spiritual worldview and his search for the transcendent, reaching beyond the profane and the everyday. In doing so, he consciously drew upon the tradition of Russian icon painting: its abstracted visual language, which dispenses with individual features, corresponded to his idea of the archetypal image. Despite numerous variations, the fundamental type of his Meditations remained constant—an iconic representation once discovered, possessing in itself a quiet, almost magical effect that requires no further interpretation.



“Small formats of great intensity characterized both Jawlensky’s late work and the collection of Jochen Neynaber.”



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#Alexej von Jawlensky #Expressionism #Russia #Modern Art #Geometric Abstraction #Painting #1930s #Modern Art.







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