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Lot Essay
Infantin (Spanierin) was painted at the high point of Jawlensky's career. Weiler records the work as being executed in 1912 but an inscription and signature on the reverse of the board give the date as 1913.
During this period, a whole ream of influences and ideas condensed and coalesced, allowing the artist to find a true and unique means of expression that allowed him to translate, through colour and form, a sense of nature, of his own soul, and of the wonders of the divine. This vintage period began the previous summer, as Jawlensky himself recalled, and lasted only a few years, until the outbreak of the First World War:
'In the Spring of 1911 Marianne Werefkin, Andrej, Helene and I went to Prerow on the Baltic. For me that summer meant a great step forward in my art. I painted my finest landscapes there as well as large figure paintings in powerful, glowing colours not at all naturalistic or objective. I used a great deal of red, blue, orange, cadmium yellow and chromium-oxide green. My forms were very strongly contoured in Prussian blue and came with tremendous power from an inner ecstasy. The hunchback, The violet turban, Self-portrait (now in Basle) and Fantasy head (Gröpel Bochum Collections) were created in this way. It was a turning-point in my art. It was in these years, up to 1914 just before the war, that I painted my most powerful works, referred to as the 'pre-war works'' (Jawlensky, quoted in 'Memoir dictated to Lisa Kümmel, Wiesbaden, 1937', pp. 25-33 in M. Jawlensky, L. Peroni-Jawlensky and A. Jawlensky, p. 31).
Infantin dates from only the following year, and retains the 'red, blue, orange, cadmium yellow and chromium-oxide green' that the artist felt made his works so visually striking. In this painting, swathes of bold colour have been used to the utmost expressive effect in order to condense a sense of life and of harmony. At the same time, this colour has also been used to create eyes that appear as vast, absorbing pools, emphasised by their dark outlines, provide a searing point of focus that in fact makes it look like the painting is appraising the viewer.
This effect reflects the importance that Jawlensky ascribed to the human face in his art. This was in part due to his Russian upbringing-- one of his most significant early memories was seeing a Russian icon of the Madonna, and the impact of that memory reverberates through all his paintings. For they are icons in their own rights, focal points for meditation and contemplation, little shards of the divine, which has made itself manifest through the intercession of Jawlensky himself. The face in Infantin is itself codified, albeit in a manner that owes more to Fauvism, Expressionism and Kandinsky, in a way that can trace its origins to the almost ritualistic appearance of Russian Orthodox icons. Jawlensky understood that the face, as in the ancient icons, perfectly encapsulated all that he sought to convey:
'It became necessary for me to find a form for the face, for I realized that great art was only to be painted with religious feeling. And that was something I could bring only to the human face' (Jawlensky, quoted in Clemens Weiler, Jawlensky: Heads, Faces, Meditations, London, 1971, p. 30).
These depictions of the face were becoming increasingly formal during the years leading up to the First World War, as can be seen in the small group of paintings of 'Manola' that date from the same period as Infantin. At the same time, the works from the pre-War years retained a greater link to the visual reality around the artist Jawlensky had not yet developed the semi-abstract idiom that would characterise the Variations or the Abstrakter Kopf series. Instead, like the 'Manola' pictures, Infantin shows a highly distinguished and distinctive head that is rooted in the 'real' world. Indeed, as a model, Jawlensky has here used Helene Neznakomova, who would later become his wife.
Jawlensky's domestic arrangements were as idiosyncratic as his paintings, and he used to travel a great deal with his friend and fellow painter Marianne von Werefkin as well as his companion Helene, the mother of the artist's son Andreas. In Infantin, Jawlensky has used Helene as his model. Yet while this relationship informs the painting, Jawlensky has clearly tapped into something more profound in this picture. It is a tribute to Jawlensky that many of the people who came into contact with him would become devotees. His intense spiritualism and his profound and almost religious belief in art were hugely influential. One of the greatest examples of the extent to which this was the case is seen in the life of Emmy 'Galka' Scheyer, who owned Infantin. Galka entered Jawlensky's orbit as a student, but was so impressed by his vision that she abandoned her own efforts, realising that she could never attain such a purity of intent and such a level of genius. She therefore devoted herself to promoting Jawlensky's work. This led to the creation of the Blue Four, a small group of artists that included several of the protagonists of the former Blaue Reiter movement to which its name referred but which had in part been decimated by the First World War. The Blue Four consisted of Jawlensky, and his friends Kandinsky, as well as Feininger and Klee.
The Blue Four was founded in 1924, and was essentially a means of promoting the works of its artists to an American market. However, at the time that Infantin was painted, Jawlensky was becoming increasingly involved with the Blaue Reiter, having abandoned the Neue Künstlervereinigung Munich which he himself had helped found. This group had essentially become schismatic, had rotted from the core, and had first been abandoned by some of Jawlensky's closest friends and colleagues; in 1912, he too abandoned it. Infantin therefore dates from the crucial Blaue Reiter period, when Jawlensky was in contact not only with Kandinsky, with whom he had shared some of his most important breakthroughs while holidaying several years earlier, but also by artists such as Marc, Macke and Campendonck, and the great sense of vision, the great belief that they all shared in art itself, shone through Jawlensky's paintings. There is a sense of the spiritual in Infantin that is so strong as to make it appear of no small coincidence that it was painted the same year that the celebrated almanac of the Blaue Reiter was printed. For Infantin shows the liberation of colour, the freedom of movement, the deliberate search for a profound and elemental spirit, and an increasingly abstract vehicle of depiction that that movement advocated.
During this period, a whole ream of influences and ideas condensed and coalesced, allowing the artist to find a true and unique means of expression that allowed him to translate, through colour and form, a sense of nature, of his own soul, and of the wonders of the divine. This vintage period began the previous summer, as Jawlensky himself recalled, and lasted only a few years, until the outbreak of the First World War:
'In the Spring of 1911 Marianne Werefkin, Andrej, Helene and I went to Prerow on the Baltic. For me that summer meant a great step forward in my art. I painted my finest landscapes there as well as large figure paintings in powerful, glowing colours not at all naturalistic or objective. I used a great deal of red, blue, orange, cadmium yellow and chromium-oxide green. My forms were very strongly contoured in Prussian blue and came with tremendous power from an inner ecstasy. The hunchback, The violet turban, Self-portrait (now in Basle) and Fantasy head (Gröpel Bochum Collections) were created in this way. It was a turning-point in my art. It was in these years, up to 1914 just before the war, that I painted my most powerful works, referred to as the 'pre-war works'' (Jawlensky, quoted in 'Memoir dictated to Lisa Kümmel, Wiesbaden, 1937', pp. 25-33 in M. Jawlensky, L. Peroni-Jawlensky and A. Jawlensky, p. 31).
Infantin dates from only the following year, and retains the 'red, blue, orange, cadmium yellow and chromium-oxide green' that the artist felt made his works so visually striking. In this painting, swathes of bold colour have been used to the utmost expressive effect in order to condense a sense of life and of harmony. At the same time, this colour has also been used to create eyes that appear as vast, absorbing pools, emphasised by their dark outlines, provide a searing point of focus that in fact makes it look like the painting is appraising the viewer.
This effect reflects the importance that Jawlensky ascribed to the human face in his art. This was in part due to his Russian upbringing-- one of his most significant early memories was seeing a Russian icon of the Madonna, and the impact of that memory reverberates through all his paintings. For they are icons in their own rights, focal points for meditation and contemplation, little shards of the divine, which has made itself manifest through the intercession of Jawlensky himself. The face in Infantin is itself codified, albeit in a manner that owes more to Fauvism, Expressionism and Kandinsky, in a way that can trace its origins to the almost ritualistic appearance of Russian Orthodox icons. Jawlensky understood that the face, as in the ancient icons, perfectly encapsulated all that he sought to convey:
'It became necessary for me to find a form for the face, for I realized that great art was only to be painted with religious feeling. And that was something I could bring only to the human face' (Jawlensky, quoted in Clemens Weiler, Jawlensky: Heads, Faces, Meditations, London, 1971, p. 30).
These depictions of the face were becoming increasingly formal during the years leading up to the First World War, as can be seen in the small group of paintings of 'Manola' that date from the same period as Infantin. At the same time, the works from the pre-War years retained a greater link to the visual reality around the artist Jawlensky had not yet developed the semi-abstract idiom that would characterise the Variations or the Abstrakter Kopf series. Instead, like the 'Manola' pictures, Infantin shows a highly distinguished and distinctive head that is rooted in the 'real' world. Indeed, as a model, Jawlensky has here used Helene Neznakomova, who would later become his wife.
Jawlensky's domestic arrangements were as idiosyncratic as his paintings, and he used to travel a great deal with his friend and fellow painter Marianne von Werefkin as well as his companion Helene, the mother of the artist's son Andreas. In Infantin, Jawlensky has used Helene as his model. Yet while this relationship informs the painting, Jawlensky has clearly tapped into something more profound in this picture. It is a tribute to Jawlensky that many of the people who came into contact with him would become devotees. His intense spiritualism and his profound and almost religious belief in art were hugely influential. One of the greatest examples of the extent to which this was the case is seen in the life of Emmy 'Galka' Scheyer, who owned Infantin. Galka entered Jawlensky's orbit as a student, but was so impressed by his vision that she abandoned her own efforts, realising that she could never attain such a purity of intent and such a level of genius. She therefore devoted herself to promoting Jawlensky's work. This led to the creation of the Blue Four, a small group of artists that included several of the protagonists of the former Blaue Reiter movement to which its name referred but which had in part been decimated by the First World War. The Blue Four consisted of Jawlensky, and his friends Kandinsky, as well as Feininger and Klee.
The Blue Four was founded in 1924, and was essentially a means of promoting the works of its artists to an American market. However, at the time that Infantin was painted, Jawlensky was becoming increasingly involved with the Blaue Reiter, having abandoned the Neue Künstlervereinigung Munich which he himself had helped found. This group had essentially become schismatic, had rotted from the core, and had first been abandoned by some of Jawlensky's closest friends and colleagues; in 1912, he too abandoned it. Infantin therefore dates from the crucial Blaue Reiter period, when Jawlensky was in contact not only with Kandinsky, with whom he had shared some of his most important breakthroughs while holidaying several years earlier, but also by artists such as Marc, Macke and Campendonck, and the great sense of vision, the great belief that they all shared in art itself, shone through Jawlensky's paintings. There is a sense of the spiritual in Infantin that is so strong as to make it appear of no small coincidence that it was painted the same year that the celebrated almanac of the Blaue Reiter was printed. For Infantin shows the liberation of colour, the freedom of movement, the deliberate search for a profound and elemental spirit, and an increasingly abstract vehicle of depiction that that movement advocated.