Jawlensky, Alexei von (1864-1941)

Russian painter. He was a major figure in German expressionism. Like his close friend Kandinsky, he was influenced by fauvism and Russian folk art. He reached his most distinctive style in 1908-10 with landscapes such as Murnau (1910; National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC), but is best known for his portraits, for example Helene with Red Turban (1910; Solomon R Guggenheim Museum, New York).

Jawlensky was born in Kuslowo, Russia. He studied art at St Petersburg under the Russian realist Ilya Repin, but in 1896 went to Munich and became associated with the progressive artists of the Blaue Reiter group. In 1909, he and Kandinsky broke away from the Munich Sezession to form the Neue Kunstlervereinigung (New Artists' Alliance), which drew on post-Impressionism and the Fauves.

Jawlensky's portraits and abstract paintings of the period are distinctive for their strong, bold shapes in jewel-like colours, accentuated by thick, dark contours. In the 1920s he produced a series of unusual, cubist-style heads which he called ‘meditations’, for example Head: Red Light (1926; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco).