This exhibition focuses on the years Alexej von Jawlensky (1864-1941) spent in Switzerland from 1914 to 1921. It was a decisive period in the development of the Russian artist’s work as he moved away from the expressiveness of his first paintings in search of a more interiorized mode of figuration. It was between Saint-Prex, Zurich and Ascona that he began painting his well-known series of variations on the portrait and landscape which were to lead him to the fringes of abstraction.

Organized in partnership with the Kunsthaus Zürich and the Wilhelm Lehmbruck Museum in Duisburg, the exhibition brings together over a hundred works by Jawlensky and the artists he met while in Switzerland: Arp, Hodler, Janco, Klee, Lehmbruck, Richter and Taeuber-Arp. Several works by these artists show surprising resemblances in their conception and form with Jawlensky’s development during the same period.
 

Jawlensky’s exile in Switzerland during the First World War brought about a major reorientation of his work as he explains himself in his memoirs: "When I first arrived in Saint-Prex I intended to continue working as I had in Munich. But something deep inside me held me back from painting colourful, sensual pictures. So much suffering had left its mark and I had to find other forms and colours to express what was stirring my soul." The peaceful atmosphere in Saint-Prex was conducive to a profound questioning of his pictorial work and the beginning of a new approach: serial creation. Between 1914 and 1921 Jawlensky embarked on four major series : the Variations, the Mystical Heads, the Saviour’s Faces and the Abstract Heads.

With the Mystical Heads Jawlensky broke away from the traditional conception of portrait painting. Wide-open almond-shaped eyes stand out in the oval face, framed by black curls - an oval shape already observed in the Variations. These expressive features became the stereotype face for Jawlensky which he was to portray with various combinations of associated and superimposed colours. The atmosphere of dignity and solemnity surrounding these increasingly stylized faces is accentuated by their full-face position and symmetrical arrangement. Noble and bare, they radiate the artist’s psychological and spiritual values and his belief in a ’Whole’ which is at once human and divine.

The Saviour’s Faces follow on from the previous series. Here the flaming colours of the Mystical Heads give way to more delicate shades which confer a transparent, divine glow to the faces whose eyes are sometimes closed. Thus the circular shapes the artist has applied to their foreheads recall the Buddhist symbol of wisdom. Very like icons in their posture and the impact of their artistic message, these paintings elude tangible reality.

Jawlensky started painting the Abstract Heads in Ascona using curved and rectilinear forms which he subtly shaped with graduated shades. The artist conceived the first work in this series, Original Form (Urform), as a model whose essential aspects he made stand out in order to draw closer to an archetype. That U-shaped face became the receptacle for a whole inner world where the spiritual converged with the religious. The patches of colour on the forehead or near the mouth depict a rainbow or cosmic symbols such as the sun and the moon.

JAWLENSKY AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES
During the seven years Jawlensky spent in Switzerland he developed special relationships with many artists. In the conception and form of their work Arp, Hodler, Janco, Klee, Lehmbruck, Richter and Taeuber-Arp bear surprising resemblances to Jawlensky’s development over the same period. The dialogue between these artists’ paintings, drawings and sculptures reveals just how rich their work together was and reflects the full significance of Jawlensky’s research during the years he spend in Switzerland.

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