2008 Woodie Awards
Norton Simon Exhibit: Alexei Jawlensky
Taylor Alfonso
Issue date: 9/12/07 Section: Online Exclusive
If you were to close your eyes, think deep and long about your feelings, and then using just shapes and colors, express those emotions through paint, what would that canvas look like?
Expressionists, the movement of artists following Impressionists, used art to communicate emotions, thoughts, reflections, moods, and atmosphere.
Alexei Jawlensky is one such expressionist artist of the early twentieth century whose art represents a specific and important time in history.
The exhibit at the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, "Alexei Jawlensky (1864-1941)," explores Jawlensky's role as a 20th century avant-garde artist.
Jawlensky was born in Russia but moved to Munich, Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. He exhibited around Europe and was influenced by renowned post-impressionists like Gauguin, Cezanne, Van Gough, and Matisse.
The exhibit begins with a series of animated, almost caricature like portraits of women. The portraits confront the viewer aggressively with color. Green faces, orange cheeks instead of pink rosy cheeks, and enormous, exaggerated eyes with deep, dark shadows. This rendition of portraiture using unconventional color can be seen in portraits create by Van Gough.
An important figure to Jawlensky's success as an artist and world wideexposure was his friend, model, and art dealer, Galka Scheyer. Jawlensky paints Scheyer in soft pastel pinks, greens, yellows, and blues and uses white instead of black as accents. These colors give the portraits a quiet mood and suggest his deep respect and admiration for his friend.
In 1914, at the onset of World War I, Jawlensky was forced out of Germany and moved to Switzerland where he painted his landscape series. Jawlensky's landscapes lack perspective and realism, but make up for it in color and beauty; a soft billowing cloud floating above a mountain, a bright orange and yellow sunset, and dark blue rustling leaves of a black tree.
Jawlensky said that in painting nature, he tried to capture the spirit and mood of the landscape and communicate what nature
Expressionists, the movement of artists following Impressionists, used art to communicate emotions, thoughts, reflections, moods, and atmosphere.
Alexei Jawlensky is one such expressionist artist of the early twentieth century whose art represents a specific and important time in history.
The exhibit at the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, "Alexei Jawlensky (1864-1941)," explores Jawlensky's role as a 20th century avant-garde artist.
Jawlensky was born in Russia but moved to Munich, Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. He exhibited around Europe and was influenced by renowned post-impressionists like Gauguin, Cezanne, Van Gough, and Matisse.
The exhibit begins with a series of animated, almost caricature like portraits of women. The portraits confront the viewer aggressively with color. Green faces, orange cheeks instead of pink rosy cheeks, and enormous, exaggerated eyes with deep, dark shadows. This rendition of portraiture using unconventional color can be seen in portraits create by Van Gough.
An important figure to Jawlensky's success as an artist and world wideexposure was his friend, model, and art dealer, Galka Scheyer. Jawlensky paints Scheyer in soft pastel pinks, greens, yellows, and blues and uses white instead of black as accents. These colors give the portraits a quiet mood and suggest his deep respect and admiration for his friend.
In 1914, at the onset of World War I, Jawlensky was forced out of Germany and moved to Switzerland where he painted his landscape series. Jawlensky's landscapes lack perspective and realism, but make up for it in color and beauty; a soft billowing cloud floating above a mountain, a bright orange and yellow sunset, and dark blue rustling leaves of a black tree.
Jawlensky said that in painting nature, he tried to capture the spirit and mood of the landscape and communicate what nature
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