Variation: Zärtlichkeiten 1917

Alexej von Jawlensky made this oil painting called ‘Variation: Zärtlichkeiten’ and it's just delicious! I imagine him squeezing paint directly onto the canvas, smearing and layering those colours. There's pink, green, blue, and orange, but it's the way he uses them, that’s so interesting; these aren't just colours, they’re feelings, right? I see a kind of landscape, but it's more of a mindscape. The colours bump into each other, like thoughts colliding. Looking at this makes me think about what Jawlensky might have been thinking about— how all paintings are a kind of conversation with the history of painting itself. We stand on the shoulders of those who came before us. You can see him trying to make something new from something old. Like tenderness emerging. The openness of it all is a reminder that painting is an ongoing, ever-changing process, and that there are no fixed answers, only possibilities.