From 30 January Louisiana Museum of Modern Art opens its doors to an exhibition of the late expressionist painter.
A friend of the greats such as Wassily Kandinsky he based himself in the art scene in Munich until war broke out in World War One when he moved to Switzerland in 1914.
It was in this move that he began to experiment with “Variations” and he painted the view outside his window over and over again.
Louisiana writes: “They represent the beginning of Jawlensky’s interest in serial images, in the repetition of the motif. The more he painted, the more they lost their connection to something seen, to the external world. The logic of the picture itself became the governing factor. For the rest of Jawlensky’s life, the relationship between repetition and variation became his artistic project.”
It was in Switzerland that Jawlensky started to paint faces serially and this became the focus of his last twenty years of life. The exhibition draws in on this mantra and foresees the culture of his relevant works.
His models were Russian Orthodox icons in which the artist found a form in the face in what he stated was that great art could only be painted with religious feeling.
Later in life in the 1930s the Nazis banned his exhibitions in Germany and the artist’s life was changing due to poor health. It was at this stage he began an artistic release and he made over 1000 small paintings of faces which he called “Meditations”.
The exhibition draws on the life and inspiration of Jewlensky’s works at Louisiana. This will be the first solo exhibition about the artist in Scandinavia and follows a series of exhibitions about overlooked/underexposed positions in early 20th century art history.
For more information and to book tickets please visit: www.louisiana.dk
