Sale: 525 / Evening Sale, Dec. 10. 2021 in Munich Lot 206

 

206
Alexej von Jawlensky
Große Meditation: Ich und Chartres, 1937.
Oil on canvas-structured paper, originally lami...
Estimate:
€ 80,000 / $ 86,400
Sold:
€ 125,000 / $ 135,000

(incl. surcharge)
Große Meditation: Ich und Chartres. 1937.
Oil on canvas-structured paper, originally laminated on board, on fiberboard.
Jawlensky/Pieroni-Jawlensky/Jawlensky 2120. Lower left monogrammed and dated in lower right. Inscribed "A. Jawlensky / I 1937 N 1" by Lisa Kümmel on the reverse, there also titled "Ich und Chartres" by Andreas Jawlensky, the artist's son . 29.6 x 22.8 cm (11.6 x 8.9 in). Fiberboard: 47 x 37,1 cm (18,5 x 14,6 in).
[CH].
• From the artist's estate.
• Part of the same private collection for almost 50 years.
• The largest Meditation offered on the international auction market in the past twenty years (source: artprice.com).
• Meditation in remarkably clear and bright colors
.

PROVENANCE: From the artist's estate (1941, until at least 1956).
Roman Norbert Ketterer, Campione d’Italia (1973, in commission).
Private collection Switzerland (acquired directly from the above in 1973, ever since family-owned).

EXHIBITION: Alexej von Jawlensky, Galerie Otto Stangl, Munich, September 4 - October 8, 1956 (with illu.).
Exposition Alexej Jawlensky, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon, June to September 1970, cat. no. 79.

LITERATURE: Clemens Weiler, Alexej von Jawlensky, Cologne 1959, cat. no. 490.
Clemens Weiler, Alexej von Jawlensky. Köpfe, Gesichte, Meditationen, Hanau 1970, cat. no. 1041 (with illu. on plate 31).
Stuttgarter Kunstkabinett Roman Norbert Ketterer, Campione d’Italia, Moderne Kunst VIII, 1973, cat. no. 46 (with illu. on p. 90).
Ewald Rathke, Alexej Jawlensky. Meditationen, Hanau 1991 (2nd edition), cat. no. 61 (with illu.).
Alexej von Jawlensky on May 16, 1936, in a letter to his art agent Emmy" Galka "Scheyer in New York (quoted from: Alexej von Jawlensky, Museum Wiesbaden, 1991, p. 294)

In fact, this is one of the few 'real', in the truest sense of the world, ‘great‘ meditations that Jawlensky executed in this size. The bright colors, which the artist applies evenly, alternating between differently broken shades of blue and a muted, rather dark red, reflects a perhaps cheerful moment in an existence determined by suffering and pain. In stoic balance, it can be assumed, Jawlensky forms an introverted head in a solid structure. With the series of the "Meditations", Jawlensky marked the apex of his series of paintings, which commenced in the Swiss town of Saint. Prex on the shores of Lake Geneva at the end of 1914, early 1915, with the so-called Variations. Since then Jawlensky had been redesigning themes he considered worthy of variation over and over again, reducing them to ever smaller units, until finally attaining a purely objective structure, as in this case in form of a suggested elegant face. The artist underlines the Christian aspect of the Meditations in the title: "Me and Chartres". "I am so far away from everything, my life is limited to my room, my work and my thoughts, I have no other joy than my work", Jawlensky wrote in the above-mentioned letter to Emmy Scheyer and continues to associate: "I am not in Paris, like Kandinsky, my Paris is so small." [MvL]



206
Alexej von Jawlensky
Große Meditation: Ich und Chartres, 1937.
Oil on canvas-structured paper, originally lami...
Estimate:
€ 80,000 / $ 86,400
Sold:
€ 125,000 / $ 135,000

(incl. surcharge)