Lot 22 Dα

The painting “Grosse Meditation” is signed and dated to 1936 and belongs to the last important group of works by Jawlensky: the “Meditationen”. These form the conclusion of a line of development within his oeuvre that began with the large, intensely colourful heads and then underwent a progressive chromatic and compositional reduction through the “Mystiche Köpfe” and “Abstrakte Köpfe” of the 1920s. Jawlensky himself saw them as the pinnacle of his work and as its quintessence in their formal concentration: “My works from the last period have been in very small formats”, he writes, “but the paintings are even deeper and more spiritual, articulated through colour alone. Because I have sensed that, as a result of my illness, I will no longer be able to paint in the future, I work like a man possessed on these little Meditations of mine” (cited in: exh. cat. München/Baden-Baden 1983, p. 292). The “Grosse Meditation” is unusually dark and displays a reserved palette. A network of brown vertical and horizontal lines mark the nose, closed eyes, mouth and hairline. He has filled in the intervening spaces by mixing in a dark green or red and applying the paint in long, parallel strokes. There are only a few examples from this series of works that so clearly illustrate their proximity to the tradition of Russian Orthodox icon painting.
The present Meditation was part of the group of paintings sent to the United States by Galka Scheyer (1889-1945), who was Jawlensky’s agent and friend for many years. She had organised numerous exhibitions for the artist in the preceding years and enabled him to support himself by selling his works. From 1924 she also publicised the work of the “Blue Four” – Kandinsky, Klee, Feininger and Jawlensky – in the United States.