Schokko With Wide-Brimmed Hat 1910

Alexej von Jawlensky made this painting, Schokko With Wide-Brimmed Hat, with oil on board, and it's this mad combination of colors that grabs you. Just look at the face: a sickly, jaundiced yellow that is not meant to be realistic! But you know, the colors are all part of the game: the juicy, thick strokes of red on the dress matched against the cool blues and oranges on the hat, it’s a whole conversation about warm and cold. The paint is laid on with an almost aggressive simplicity. There’s something really affecting about the mark-making itself. Jawlensky is really leaning into this heavy, bold application, not trying to blend or smooth anything out. It’s like he's saying, "Here it is, the pure, unadulterated color!" He was mates with Kandinsky, and you can see they were into similar ideas of using color to express feeling and emotion. I find the painting compelling because it takes the known form of portraiture and stretches it towards abstraction. It's a reminder that art is an ongoing experiment, a constant pushing of boundaries.