Jawlensky in der Schweiz 1914 - 1921. Begegnungen mit Hodler, Klee, Arp …

Alongside Klee and Kandinsky, Alexej von Jawlensky (1864–1941) is one of the pioneers of modern painting. He was very successful and lived a materially comfortable existence in Munich, which ended abruptly when World War I broke out. Jawlensky had to leave the country within a few days and travelled with his life’s companion Marianne von Werefkin and the servant girl Helene Nesnakomoff, mother of his son Andreas, to Saint-Prex on the Lake of Geneva. The simple life of the fishing village was a great contrast to worldly life in Munich and steered Jawlensky’s art onto new paths. He turned away from his expressive manner and moved toward a new, internalized, frontal and flatly designed form of portraiture. By force of circumstance, he worked on small sheets of paper and often painted the view from his dwelling; the series became a principle of his work. After Saint-Prex came periods in Aurich and Ascona. In 1921 Jawlensky left Tessin and moved to Wiesbaden, where he llived until his death. Curated by Angelika Affentranger-Kirchrath and Bernhard von Waldkirch, this exhibition not only examined Jawlensky’s Werk, but put it alongside contemporaries Jawlensky had exchanged ideas with and with whom it can be proved that he was associated. From his base in Saint-Prex, Jawlensky met Ferdinand Hodler, Paul Klee, Igor Strawinsky and Cuno Amiet, in Zurich he came in contact with Hans Arp, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Marcel Janco, Hans Richter and Wilhelm Lehmbruck. In Ascona he was in friendly contact with the Romanian painter Arthur Segal. In the memoir he dictated in 1937, Jawlensky talked about this environment and described the Swiss years as the most interesting in his life. The exhibition, which was not concerned with the influence of other artists on Jawlensky but rather with demonstrating the artistic climate of the time covering the years of his Swiss exile, was well received. ‘The isolated view of Jawlensky was subdued and his work absorbed into the context’ (Thomas Ribi, Neue Zürcher Zeitung). ‘This exhibition shows works of […] artists beside those of Jawlensky, revealing interesting parallels’ (Margaret Studer, Wall Street Journal Europe). Erdmann Neumeister found the exhibition and publication very carefully constructed. But he also asserted: They ‘go only insubstantially further than earlier events and publications’ (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung). The publication with the exhibition was Jawlensky in der Schweiz, 1914–1921, Gesichter und Variationen by Angelia Affentranger-Kirchrath published by Verlag Benteli. The exhibition subsequently went on tour to the Fondation de l’Hermitage in Lausanne and the Wilhelm Lehmbruck Museum in Duisburg.