About the Work
The outbreak of World War I forced Jawlensky to leave Germany. In his exile in St Prex on Lake Geneva, he took to recording the view from his window over and over again, responding to the visual effects of the constantly changing weather, times of day, and seasons. He ended up producing hundreds of these ‘Variations’, usually several on a single day. In the process, he reduced the path, bushes, and trees to a few recurring forms and colour zones. Here he laid them out in pencil, then using a bit of oil paint to unite them in a soft harmony of pastels.
About the Acquisition
The Städel Museum has the photographer, psychotherapist, philanthropist, and long-time Frankfurt resident Ulrike Crespo (1950–2019) to thank for more than ninety works ranging from classical modernism to American pop art. The paintings, drawings, and prints by Wassily Kandinsky, Otto Dix, Oskar Schlemmer, Max Ernst, Jean Dubuffet, Cy Twombly, and others originally belonged to the holdings of her grandfather, the Darmstadt-based industrialist Karl Ströher (1890–1977), who amassed an extensive art collection after World War II.
