About this artwork
This lively little work on paper was made only one year before arthritis forced Alexej von Jawlensky to stop painting. The artist’s progressively worsening condition meant he was producing increasingly small-scale works, until they were often only a few inches in size. He had made many studies of flowers throughout his career. The petals and stems’ gestural strokes of colour act as a counterpoint to the gathering darkness in the artist’s life and work. The year he stopped painting, 1937, was also the year his works were confiscated from public collections in Germany and his work was included in the notorious Degenerate Art exhibition in Munich, organised by the Nazi Party to showcase the ‘moral decay’ of modern art, as propaganda to support their racist and antisemitic worldviews.
Published September 2022
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artist:Alexej von Jawlensky (1864 - 1941) Russian
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title:Flowers in a Vase
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date created:1936
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materials:Oil on paper
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measurements:18.00 x 12.00 cm (framed: 30.50 x 24.00 x 2.00 cm)
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object type:
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credit line:The Henry and Sula Walton collection: bequeathed 2012
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accession number:GMA 5289
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gallery:
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subject:
Alexej von Jawlensky
Alexej von Jawlensky
Jawlensky was born in Russia, and started out with a military career. He began his art studies comparatively late, in his mid-twenties, and in 1896 left the army and went to Munich where he enrolled at art school. Another Russian artist, Wassily Kandinsky, was a fellow student, and the two became...