(Torschok 1864–1941 Wiesbaden)
Young girl, 1906, oil on cardboard, laid down on thin hardboard, 34.6 x 25 cm, framed, (PS)

Provenance:
Lisa Kümmel, Wiesbaden,
Private Ownership;
Hanna Bekker vom Rath, Hofheim
Gift of Hanna Bekker vom Rath to Dr Max Lütze
Private Ownership, Germany
Lempertz, 29.5.2003, acquired by current owner

Exhibited:
Kunstkabinett Hanna Bekker vom Rath, Alexej von Jawlensky, cat. no. 5, Frankfurt 1954 (exhibition label verso)
loan from Staatsgalerie Stuttgart - verso label from the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart with handwritten note: “L 1092/Alexej v. Jawlensky/gestr. R.3.10.75”

Literature:
Maria Jawlensky, Lucia Pieroni-Jawlensky, Angelica Jawlensky, Alexej von Jawlensky, Catalogue raisonné of the oil paintings, volume one, 1890–1914, Munich 1991, no. 138, with ill.

Jawlensky’s early work from his time in Munich has the appearance of visual phrases formulated by him in the face of a multiplicity of stimuli. His work responds to the swiftly changing influences around him with intellectual wit and an abundance of empathy. The journeys he undertook to France in the company of Marianne von Werefkin in 1903, 1905 and 1906 were interspersed with encounters with the work of artists, such as Matisse, Gauguin, van Gogh and the Fauves, which had a marked effect on Jawlensky’s oeuvre. From Gauguin, Jawlensky borrowed a harmonious arrangement of light and dark colour fields, and a simplification of form in order to produce a powerful silhouetted effect and a logical structuring of the composition as a whole. “The imaginary and fantastical are thus as absent from his visual work as are attempts to aestheticise and refine reality (...) His extant oeuvre suggests that his artistic practice was largely uninfluenced by relevant coeval tendencies, and those considered avant-garde, and that he sought to find his own path, always basing his work on what was visually accessible and immediately present to his senses.” (Armin Zweite, ‘Jawlensky in München’, in: exh. cat., Alexej Jawlensky, Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich / Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, February - June 1983, p. 47f)
The painting, ‘Young girl’, executed circa 1906, exhibits a clear structure, typical of Jawlensky’s early Munich work. The figure of the girl, realised in an abstract manner, is arranged in the centre of the rectangular image, and her body is rendered using dark black formal elements, such as, for instance, her hair, the lines drawn to indicate the contours of her figure, the internal structure of her physique and the curve of the back of the chair. The sunlight falling from the left throws a dark green shadow behind the figure, creating a contrast with the reddish-brown dress worn by the almost doll-like form, and, above all, with the light-red bouquet of flowers in her hand and her red mouth. At first glance, the small painting clearly prefigures later developments in Jawlensky’s oeuvre, rendered as it is in such a sketchy manner, with its subtle colour correspondences and contrasts and its defining stylistic characteristics, including the dark contours, the inner structuring of the form and the figure’s dark eyes.

“Apples, trees, human faces are, for me, just hints that one should look for something else in them: the life of colours, captured by a passionate person, someone who is in love.”
(Alexej von Jawlensky, from a letter dated 1905)