Alexei von Jawlensky at the Lenbachhaus Museum, Munich

The Hunchback (1905)

Alexei von Jawlensky was born in Russia in 1864 but spent much of his life in Germany working with other expressionist painters. He started out with a military career, but after seeing an art exhibition at the World Fair in Moscow in 1880, he managed to get himself stationed at St. Petersburg near an art school until he was decommissioned.

Jawlensky met Wassily Kandinsky as a fellow art student at Munich’s Academy of Fine Arts. Later influences included van Gogh, Gauguin and particularly Matisse. In 1912 he joined the "Blue Riders" school formed by Kandinsky and including Paul Klee. The group's work is featured at the Lenbachhaus Museum in Munich.

Meditation the Prayer (1922)


Jawlensky lived in Switzerland in exile from Germany during World War I. During the later years of the war he started to work with more abstract and mystical subjects, particularly by depicting the human face as an icon. In one of his last works (below), the face has been drawn in the form of the cross.


Meditation (1937)

Archeology Exhibit at Rimini

"Castel del Monte, whose original function is still unclear, was certainly modeled on the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. The work was a training ground for the greatest innovator of Italian Gothic sculpture: Nicola Pisano, whom the documents describe as “De Apulia”, a native of these parts. Between 1240 and 1245 Nicola Pisano began his career under Frederick II, perhaps as an architect and engraver of cameos as well as a sculptor. He absorbed a wide range of classical culture. After further elaborating it in the light of the finest Tuscan works and renewing it by the “truth of life” from Gothic from north of the Alps, it proved sufficient to fill the art of central Italy with references to antiquity."

More on the exhibit here.