Jawlensky suffered from a progressing paralysis and had difficulties in painting. In 1933 the National Socialists banned him from exhibiting. One year later the painter began the series of 'Meditations'. In his struggle to capture the powerful statement made by the human countenance, Jawlensky passed through several intermediate phases before finally arriving at the Meditations, which represent the high point of his late work. Hindered by illness and often in pain, as he reported himself, he painted the little Meditations in a sort of hovering state, detached from the vexations of earthly existence. They are variations on a type which he created and then desired to recreate by transcendentally amplifying it yet returning endlessly to it. Trusting in the form once found, Jawlensky was aided by the magic of the colors with which he visualised the stages of his self-immersion in them. This is deeply religious art, informed by far more than the purely visual aspect.