Andreas Jawlensky

ANDREAS JAWLENSKY (Anspoki, present-day Latvia, 1902 - Barga, 1984).
"Portrait."
Oil on canvas.
Signed in the lower margin.
Provenance: From the collection of the Belgian painter Ward Lernout (1931-2019), by family transmission private collection to the present day.
Measurements: 50 x 40 cm; 64.5 x 54 cm (frame).

This intense female portrait shows Andreas Jawlensky's personal assimilation of French Fauvism and European Expressionism. The areas of color, applied with freedom and without subjection to naturalistic representation, generate an emotional vibration that recalls the chromatic searches initiated by his father, Alexej von Jawlensky, and the circles of the German avant-garde of the early 20th century.
The dynamic brushstroke and the exaltation of tone -with a predominance of yellows, blues and carmines- give the work a symbolic and deeply introspective character.

Son of the Russian painter Alexej von Jawlensky, Andreas Jawlensky was formed in the artistic environment of the Russian emigration and developed an independent career but linked to the expressionist tradition. He exhibited for the first time in 1914 in Malmö and, after the family exile in Switzerland during the First World War, he participated with his father in exhibitions in Lausanne, Zurich, Venice and Berlin. In the post-war period he settled in Wiesbaden, where he continued to exhibit in Germany and Switzerland.
His life was marked by the Second World War, during which he was captured by the Red Army and spent a decade in the Soviet gulags. Released in 1955, he resumed his painting activity and held exhibitions in New York, Los Angeles and Düsseldorf. In 1974 he obtained Swiss nationality, and in 1978 the Wiesbaden Museum dedicated an important retrospective exhibition to him.