Helle Erscheinung

Painted in 1916, Helle Erscheinung (which in English translates roughly to ‘bright apparition’) is a strong and rich example of Jawlensky’s experimentation with colour and portraiture during the war years, sitting on the cusp of his experiments between abstraction and figuration.

Jawlensky had initially undergone artistic training under Ilya Repin at the St. Peterburg Academy of Art, a school which promoted Realism and a very naturalistic style of art. He remained there from 1889 until 1896, when, frustrated with the conservatism of the artistic scene in Russia, he left for Munich, a city bursting with creativity and artistic innovation at the turn of the century. This move would prove to be transformational for Jawlensky, as he encountered new artistic styles and ideas, meeting with artists such as Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc and contributing to exhibitions and journals there. Jawlensky began experimenting with a more avant-garde style of painting, placing a new emphasis on colour in his work. Rather than meticulously following the rules of classical colour theory to achieve a naturalistic result, he now delighted in creating abstract compositions from thick strokes of undiluted intense pigment.

When war broke out in 1914, Jawlensky was expelled from Germany. He had no intention of returning to his homeland or partaking in any military activities (the latter being especially remarkable, as his family had originally intended for him to forge a career in the imperial army as per family tradition, and his initial education had been at various military academies and institutions). Instead, Jawlensky sought refuge in Switzerland where he could continue practicing his art. He moved to Saint Prex with his future wife Hélène, their son Andrej and fellow artist Marianne von Werefkin. Captivated by the beauty of the natural scenery, he quickly began to incorporate its depiction on his canvases in semi-abstracted planes of bold colour. These landscape variations dominated his artistic production in the early period of the war as he revisited the theme repeatedly in his continued search for a synthesis between colour and form in his art. Through these works, he had developed a new artistic vocabulary which soon apply to a subject that had long fascinated him: the human face.

Helle Erscheinung is a particularly remarkable example of Jawlensky’s work from this period, as it showcases the strides he hand made with his Landscape Variations, and prefigures the direction his work would later take. His masterful control over the colour palette allows him to create depth and expression to the face, through his adroit balance of the translucent pastel tones of the flesh and the bright, saturated accents of the raspberry toned cheeks and azure eyes. Like Kandinsky, Jawlensky saw light and colour not just as a means of stylistic experimentation, but a path to embodying spirituality and mysticism within his painting. Jawlensky had always been deeply religious, and in the isolation of the war years, he began to increasingly explore his faith within his art. Jawlensky claimed that all the depictions of the human face in his art were a reference to a revelatory moment of his youth, in which he had scene an icon of the Madonna in a church, and this influence of Orthodox iconography can be felt in the striking eyes, round red cheeks and dark painted border at the edges of Helle Erscheinung.

Jawlensky’s heads would become increasingly abstracted as he revisited the motif time and time again, trying to distill their essence into the purest abstracted pools of colour possible. This exploration of abstraction and religion would eventually give way later in the decade to his two most famous series: Mystical Heads and Saviour’s Faces, to both of which Helle Erscheinung is a clear precursor. When Jawlensky would reflect on these war years later in his life, he described his reinvention of the theme of the head, which he felt truly conveyed the spiritual importance of his art: “I painted these 'Variations' for some years, and then I found it necessary to find a form for the face, for I realized that great art should only be painted with religious feeling. And that was something that I could bring only to the human face” (the artist in a letter to Pater Willibrord Verkade, Wiesbaden, 12 June 1938).