Alexej von Jawlensky Quotes about Art

Alexej von Jawlensky was a famous Russian born painter associated with Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) group and the Expressionist art movement. He is best known for his raw, expressionist portraits. Famous Alexej von Jawlensky artworks include “Portrait of a Girl”, “Young Girl with a Flowered Hat”, “Mystical Head”, “The Young Christ”, “Abstract Head: Final Light”, “Medusa”, “Landscape with Red House”, “Dame mit Fächer”, “Nikita”, “Schokko mit Tellerhut”, “Variation”, “Schokko with Red Hat” and “Portrait of the Dancer Aleksandr Sakharov”.

Mini biography: Born Alexej von Jawlensky on the 13th of March, 1864 in Torzhok, Russia. His mother was Alexandra Medwedewa and his father was Georgi von Jawlensky. Von Jawlensky married Hélène Nesnakomoff in 1922 and they had one child together: Andreas. The artist died on the 15th of March, 1941 in Wiesbaden, Germany at the age of 77. Alexej von Jawlensky is buried at the Russian Orthodox Church of Saint Elizabeth in Wiesbaden, Germany.

List of Famous Alexej von Jawlensky Art Quotes

I am now mainly painting faces and landscapes; I am obsessed day and night by the vision of faces and colors. And the spiritual vision is my mystical world. Alexej von Jawlensky

I painted ‘faces’ for many years. I sat in my studio and painted, and I did not need nature to prompt me. It was enough for me to immerse myself in myself, to pray and prepare my soul to attain a religious state. Alexej von Jawlensky

Every artist works within a tradition. I am a native of Russia. My Russian soul has always been close to the art of old Russia, the Russian icons, Byzantine art, the mosaics in Ravenna, Venice, Rome, and to Romanesque art. All these artworks produced a religious vibration in my soul, as I sensed in them a deep spiritual language. This art was my tradition. Alexej von Jawlensky

I understood that I did not have to paint what I saw, not even what I felt, but only that which lived within me, in my soul. To put it in symbolic terms, it is like this: I felt within myself, within my breast, the keyboard of an organ and I had to make it resonate. And the nature that was in front of me served me only as a prompter. And that was a key that unlocked this organ and made it resonate. In the beginning it was very difficult. But little by little, it became easy for me to use colors and forms to find what was within my soul. Alexej von Jawlensky

Human faces are for me only suggestions to see something else in them – the life of color, seized with a lover’s passion. Alexej von Jawlensky

I painted these ‘Variations’ for some years and then I found it necessary to find form for the face, because I had come to understand that great art can only be painted with religious feeling. And that, I could only bring to the human face. I understood that the artist must express through his art, in forms and colors, the divine in him. Therefore a work of art is God made visible and art is ‘a longing for God’. Alexej von Jawlensky

Alexej von Jawlensky Self-Portrait Painting

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