Alexej Von Jawlensky, Volume Four: Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings (The Alexej Von Jawlensky Archive Series)

The fourth and last volume of the work of Alexej von Jawlensky covers the watercolours and drawings executed throughout his career. Over 1,200 works are included and illustrated, showing a variety of techniques - watercolour, pencil, chalk, charcoal, pastel, pen and ink, brush and ink, wax crayon and gouache. Also included are some 83 new additions to the oil oeuvre.Jawlensky's watercolours and drawings are considerably less well known than his oil paintings. They nevertheless amount to a substantial oeuvre of high artistic quality, treating broadly the same subjects as the oil paintings and belonging to most of the major series. Whether independant works, or variants of them, or preliminary studies for oil paintings, the watercolours vividly enhance appreciation of the artist's oeuvre.This volume is arranged in two parts. The first conatins watercolours and drawings dating from all stages of Jawlensky's working life, 1890 to 1938. The sedonc part is devoted to the contents of ten known sketchbooks, executed in the middle books, between around 1900 and 1920. The First World War, with the enforced departure from Munich and years spent in Switzerland, which during this period was a haven for many emigre artists and an international crossroads for experiemental new movements and ideas, amrked a turning point in Jawlensky's art. The watercolours of around 1917, for example, show Jawlensky reaching towards the new forms and approaches to colour that emerge in the series "Saviour's Faces" and "Abstract Heads." Some watercolours, especially works in the series "Variations on a Landscape Theme," more boldly approach complete abstraction than any of the oil paintings.Besides new biographical information and extensive exhibition and bibliographical data, the volume also includes two essays. In one, Michael Bockemuhl, Professor of Art History and Aestheitcs at the University of Witten, covers the dialogue between watercolour and oil media in Jawlensky's work. The other essay is by Angelica Jawlensky Bianconi on Jawlensky's stylistic evolution, in particular the genesis of each of his major series. These themes are taken up throughout the book in individual catalogue entries.