Variation: Jubilance (Seelenwandern). Um 1916.
Oil on structured board, laid on hard fibre plate.
Not in Jawlensky. Verso inscribed "8443 Maxwell" and with arrow indicating the direction as well as inscription "Top". Partly erased inscription "A. Jawlensky Morgendämmerung Nr.40" on rear board, dated "1917" as well as with partly erased inscriptions by Galka Scheyer. 35,5 x 27,2 cm (13,9 x 10,7 in).
This variation was originally laminated on board. This is enclosed, there with inscriptions.
The work was painted was on both sides, rear "Variation: Morgendämmerung", 1917/N, because of the mounting on a hard fibre plate tha painting on rear is not visible.

The work will be included in the forthcoming 4th volume of the catalog raisonné.

PROVENANCE: Emmy Galka Scheyer, Los Angeles. (sínce 1933).
Maxwell Galleries, San Fancisco (with fragments of a label on rear board).
Jimmy Wilson (Wilson, Taylor & House), Los Angeles(ca. 1965 acquired from previous owner).
Private collection USA.

EXHIBITION: Alexej Jawlensky, Galerie Emil Richter, Dresden 1922 (exhibition list with title "Seelen wandern").
Alexej Jawlensky, Kunsthütte, Chemnitz 1923, no. 257 (exhibition list with title "Seelen wandern").
Alexej Jawlensky, Kunsthaus Schaller, Stuttgart 1923 (exhibition list with title "Seelen wandern").
Die blauen Vier, Galerie Ferdinand Möller, Berlin 1929, no. 65 (with title "Seelen wandern").
Die blauen Vier: Feininger, Jawlensky, Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Los Angeles Museum, Los Angeles 1933, no. 59 (with title "Jubilance 1916").
Alexej Jawlensky, San Francisco Museum of Art, San Francisco 1936. (Verso of frame with partlöy damaged label, there titled "Jubilance 1916").
Alexej Jawlensky, University of Washington, Henry Art Gallery, Seattle 1937, no. 15 (with title "Jubilance 16").
Alexej Jawlensky, Stendahl Galleries, Los Angeles 13 May - 1 June, 1940, no. 9 (with title "Jubilance N.40 1917".

Jawlensky only began his artistic training in 1889 in St. Petersburg after a career as an officer in the tsarist army. He studied under Ilja Repin who introduced him to Marianne von Werefkin and Helene Nesnakomoff, his later wife. Jawlensky accompanied these two to Munich in 1896 where they wanted to visit a private art school. Here Jawlensky met Wassily Kandinsky. The artist undertook several trips to France and was able to show ten paintings at the 'Salon d'automne' with the help of Sergej Djagilev. Jawlensky also met Henri Matisse for the first time. In summer 1908 he worked with Kandinsky, Marianne von Werefkin and Gabriele Münter in Murnau for the first time. There, the four artists developed the idea for the foundation of the 'Neue Künstlervereinigung München' to which they aligned with other artists. In December the first exhibition took place in Munich. Two years later the 'Blauer Reiter' was established as a new idea of co-operation. In 1913 Jawlensky participated in Herwarth Walden's first German autumn Salon in Berlin. When in 1914 world war I began, Jawlensky was expelled from Germany due to his Russian citizenship. He moved with his family and Marianne von Werefkin to Prex on Lake Geneva. And remained in Switzerland until 1921, where he began painting his abstract heads in 1918.

For the exhibition in the USA that had been organized by Galka Scheyer, Jawlensky, Kandinsky, Feininger and Klee name themselves "Blaue Vier" (Blue Four). Galka Scheyer encountered works by Jawlensky in Switzerland in 1916. In the following, the artist and art pedagogue was in close and deep friendship with Jawlensky. With the exhibition she tried to increase his popularity in the USA. While the interest is rather low on the East Coast, she was able to place exhibitions in renowned institutions: ".Arthur Millier, the Los Angeles Times art critic, wrote: The first exhibition of the 'Blue Four'[..].was like a bomb." (transl. Of quote after E. Roters, Galerie Ferdinand Möller, Berlin 1984, p.114).

His final move to Wiesbaden took place in 1921. An attack of arthritis in 1929 forced the artist to visit various spas at regular intervals. Jawlensky suffered from a progressing paralysis and had difficulties in painting. One year later the painter began the series of small-format 'Meditationen'. 72 of his works were confiscated in 1937 as "degenerate". Three years later in 1941 Jawlensky died in Wiesbaden. At the beginning Jawlensky's style was influenced by the Fauves, particularly by Matisse, but the artist soon discovered his own, Expressionist style, which is characterised by strong colors and simple forms. Later he turned to those calm, spiritualised and mystical images of the Human face, which are so typical of Jawlensky. [EH].