Variation: Glorreicher Abend - Sommersegen II 1917

Curator: We are looking at Alexej von Jawlensky's 1917 oil on canvas titled, "Variation: Glorreicher Abend - Sommersegen II." It translates to "Glorious Evening - Summer Blessing II." What are your first thoughts? Editor: There's a surprising stillness for something labelled 'glorious.' The textured surface suggests thick layers built up painstakingly, yet it's almost rudimentary in its shapes. Curator: Rudimentary, perhaps in the sense that it breaks down landscape into pure form. Remember, Jawlensky was working amidst the upheaval of World War I. His turn towards abstraction represents a desire to express spiritual truths beyond the material world, to articulate inner experiences through simplified forms. Editor: The simplification feels very deliberate, the way he handled the oil paints. Did this simplification in abstraction represent an economy of materials because of wartime austerity perhaps, or a reduced access to resources? Curator: Certainly, wartime conditions influenced artistic choices. However, Jawlensky, deeply affected by the war's trauma, was also drawn to Russian Orthodox icons, to early Northern Renaissance art for the sake of capturing and relaying a simplified spiritual quality. The geometric style also hints at Jawlensky's association with Der Blaue Reiter group, experimenting with colour and form. Editor: So, those thick, opaque swaths—teal, violet, cadmium— they’re not just formal devices, but expressions of a profound internal landscape? The materiality belies its expressionistic context: he is layering, building, constructing, perhaps a new, non-objective reality in direct response to devastation. Curator: Precisely! His variations sought to distil the essence of a landscape, transforming observable reality into something deeply personal and transcendent, using form as his symbolic framework. And "glorious evening", perhaps an evening awaiting better things... a response to darkness of war and its potential to arrive again. Editor: And now I am seeing the 'glorious' of the evening because he's materially trying to construct one. What starts as thick layering soon evolves into something transcendent when it's placed within the landscape of historical and emotional context. Thank you. Curator: My pleasure! This piece exemplifies how the subjective experience finds voice amidst historical storms.