Jawlensky, Alexey

Jawlensky, Alexey

 orig. Aleksei Iavlenskii

(born March 13, 1864, Torzhok, Russia—died March 15, 1941, Wiesbaden, Ger.) Russian-born German painter. He gave up a military career to study painting, and in 1896 he moved to Munich, where he became affiliated with Der Blaue Reiter. In France in 1905 he worked with Henri Matisse. Back in Munich he produced works featuring flat areas of vibrant Fauve colour outlined with simple, thick contours. In Switzerland during World War I he painted a series of “variations” on the view from his window. Their meditative mood culminated in such semiabstract faces as Looking Within Night (1923), whose mystical intensity is reminiscent of Russian icon painting. In 1924 he joined Vasily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, and Lyonel Feininger to form Der Blaue Vier (“The Blue Four”); they exhibited together until arthritis forced Jawlensky to abandon painting.