When asked why he preferred his latest work to the earlier, Jawlensky said:
“I have put more of myself into them; they are more expressive of what I feel.”
And he went on to say the development seemed to him natural and logical. He could not understand why the heads should strike others as queer or laughable since they were the products of absolute sincerity.
Of his work a friendly critic says:
Jawlensky, formerly an officer in the Russian army, resigned a captain’s commission and turned to painting. Today he looks back into an artistic past rich in changes and just as rich in successes achieved. Gauguin, VanGogh and Cézanne have given much to him; more recently, oriental and primitive art, Byzantine pictures and antique German woodcarvings have not been without influence on him. His color is peculiarly his own, with its limpidity, its bloom, and bold modulations, the spontaneous, expressive force of which have a most refreshing effect. In its soft and surprising beauty one may perhaps discover a distinctly Russian quality. It is almost an injustice toward this artist’s pictures to reproduce them colorless. His still-life pictures excel in composition and charm by their color effects. In his landscapes a peculiar mood finds expression, always striking, always original, and often with great simplicity and beauty. His heads and half figures might be termed snapshots of the soul: a pose, a motion, a glance of the eye, retained by the briefest and most effective means. Here, too, a conscious simplifying and exaggeration becomes more and more evident. For this artist, art itself has the grace of a gesture; the soul part immediately becomes expression, and thus is shown everywhere the creative quality of an impulsive nature that owes its best to the inspiration of the moment, and from it proceeds to work with a most happy facility.[46]
Marianna von Werefkin, a Russian, uses water color, gouache, and prefers the mystery of the night to daylight. Her pictures are interesting human documents. She does not seek startling or novel pictured effects.
There is another and almost unknown artist, P. Klee, who is very highly esteemed by the most advanced men. There is certainly an exquisite refinement to his line; it is so alive it scintillates.