''Abstract Head'' is an oil painting by
Russia
Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...
n
expressionist
Expressionism is a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Northern Europe around the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it rad ...
Alexej von Jawlensky
Alexej Georgewitsch von Jawlensky (russian: Алексе́й Гео́ргиевич Явле́нский, translit=Alekséy Geórgiyevich Yavlénskiy) (13 March 1864 – 15 March 1941), surname also spelt as Yavlensky, was a Russian expressioni ...
, from ''c.'' 1921.
At about the end of
World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
(1918), von Jawlensky started to draw 'mystic heads' or 'faces of saints'. He gave them poetic titles like ''Moonlight'' or ''Inner Look''. Like
Claude Monet
Oscar-Claude Monet (, , ; 14 November 1840 – 5 December 1926) was a French painter and founder of impressionist painting who is seen as a key precursor to modernism, especially in his attempts to paint nature as he perceived it. During ...
who worked in series', he ended up concentrating on a single theme. Its appearance remained more or less constantly the same, yet varied in the use of the brush, the colorings and in the drawing, in order to bring up new aspects of an until then still unknown
transcendent spirituality.
Unlike
Wassily Kandinsky, he never moved into pure abstraction and always based his forms on nature.
References
External links
''Abstract Head'' at privateartcollection.netAlexej von Jawlensky - Artworks
1921 paintings
Paintings by Alexej von Jawlensky
{{20C-painting-stub