Alexej Jawlensky was born on March 13, 1864, in the Tver province of Torzhok, Russia. Along with Kandinsky and others, Jawlensky was one of the pioneers of nonrepresentational art, working against the institutions to establish a progressively spiritual brand of abstraction.

Before pursuing art, Jawlensky enlisted in the military and became an officer in 1887. While stationed at St. Petersburg, he studied at the Academy of Art; after realizing that his passion was in painting, he left the military to attend the Azbe School in Munich, taking frequent study trips to Provence and Brittany. In 1905 the artist was included in the Salon d'Automne in Paris, where he met Henri Matisse whom he was greatly influenced by. During this time, the artist concentrated on form, paring it down to the schematic and leaving it greatly simplified.

When Jawlensky met Wassily Kandinsky, the two artists combined forces and founded the Neue Kunstlervereinigung Munchen, an association of artists assembled to organize exhibitions in the expressionist and fauvist style. A series of semi-abstract landscapes and what he titled Mystic Heads trace the growth of abstraction in Jawlensky's work; his painting With Yellow Dot, executed in 1918, testifies to the artist's perception of color as pure sound.

At the outbreak of the First World War, Jawlensky was forced to leave Germany, fleeing to Switzerland to reside until 1921. Jawlensky and Kandinsky resigned from the Neue Kunstlervereinigung Munchen in 1924 in order to found Die Blaue Vier; other artists involved included Paul Klee and Lyonel Feininger. Jawlensky moved into a more expressive style at this point, employing vibrant colors paired with dark, heavy outlines.

Although he was not an official member of Kandinsky's group, Der Blaue Reiter, Jawlensky was sympathetic to their efforts and strongly influenced by their ideas on abstraction. At this time, the artist began to intensify the simplification of form and employ an evocative palette.

Despite ill health, Alexei Jawlensky continued to develop his style of painting up until his death on the fifteenth of March, 1941 in Wiesbaden, Germany. Continuing to intensify expression and to employ geometry to the facial features of his subjects, Jawlensky converted the human face into a symbol of expression, succeeding in developing a brand of abstraction that was suggestive, inviting the viewer to meditate on the image.

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