Kunstmuseum Ravensburg:

The monographic exhibition is dedicated to the important expressionist Alexej von Jawlensky (1864-1941) and provides an insight into the artist's most important creative phases with over 30 works. Influenced by the art of important pioneers of modernism and the Fauvists around Henri Matisse, among others, the Russian-born artist was involved in the well-known Munich artists' association "Der Blaue Reiter" and broke away from naturalistic painting at an early stage. From the very beginning, Jawlensky was not interested in a "real depiction" of the outside world, but rather in tracing the "essence of things" and an inner expression. In series of works spanning many years, he worked on pictorial themes whose expression he heightened through the simplification and typification of forms and the intensification of color. In addition to still lifes, portraits and landscapes, he created series of abstract heads. The face was a central pictorial theme for Jawlensky throughout his life. "The whole cosmos is revealed in the face", said Jawlensky in 1938 - just a few years before his death. The exhibition sheds light on Jawlensky's tireless preoccupation with the autonomy of color and his increasing connection to spiritual and religious pictorial concepts.

The tenth anniversary year of the Kunstmuseum provided the occasion for this solo presentation, as one of the most prominent works in the Selinka Collection is Jawlensky's painting "Spanish Girl" (1912). Surrounded by numerous loans, the portrait can now be seen for the first time in Ravensburg as part of Jawlensky's oeuvre as a whole and the various phases of his work.