Stillleben mit Tuch, Blumen im Krug, Apfel und Behälter auf Tisch

The Alexej von Jawlensky-Archiv S.A. will include this work in the forthcoming volume of their Von Jawlensky catalogue raisonné.

Jawlensky’s love of pure and untrammelled colour is clear in Stilleben mit Tuch, the fruit and flowers burn forth from the underlying board which provides the darker outlines from beneath. Painting in his distinguishable Cloisonnist style, with dark contouring carving through saturated colour planes, in the present work Jawlensky’s lends the fruit and other objects an intensity that is akin to stained glass. As such, Stilleben mit Tuch combines both the earlier influences of Gauguin and the School of Pont Aven with those of Jawlensky’s later Fauve counterparts, Matisse and Derain. However, as John Elderfield observes, 'The exotic colouring of Jawlensky and of the Murnau Kandinsky sets the German work apart from the French…French colouring resolved itself around the contrast of complementary hues; the German use of colour depended on an orchestration of adjacent hues, set off and enlivened by complementaries, and generally deeper and more resonant in effect...' (J. Elderfield, “The Wild Beasts”: Fauvism and its Affinites, New York, 1976, p. 143).

The key to Stilleben mit Tuch’s brilliance is not just the rich exotic palette, but a display of other specific techniques adopted by the artist and his fellow comrades of the Der Blaue Reiter group during this period. From 1903-1904 Jawlensky began working on light brown board, which, by 1905, became the sole support he'd use. From that moment on, Jawlensky would purposefully leave compositions with areas of the board still visible, its texture noticeable under paint layers applied in wavy, zig-zag strokes. Stilleben mit Tuch is a triumphant display of how he adopted this technique; with colour and texture being of major importance, Jawlensky successfully manipulates his use of exposed board, to create the effect of richly bold areas of pigment hovering above their surface and projecting outward with a vibrant urgency.

Jawlensky's increasing interest in colour would continue to expand to the point where he was to become almost spiritually attached in his pictures. Around 1911, he began to concentrate mainly on the magnificent female heads that brought him lasting fame. He thereafter painted still-life arrangements only on an occasional basis, until his final years, when he created a valedictory, visionary series of floral subjects.