Painted circa 1917, Variation is a radiantly expressive composition depicting an abstracted view of the landscape surrounding Lake Geneva. At the t.mes in which the present work was executed, Jawlensky was staying at Saint-Prex on Lake Geneva having fled Germany amid the chaos of war. Switzerland provided the artist and his family with the safety and natural beauty necessary for the artist to work with reinvigorated fervour. Following his earlier Fauvist works, it was his t.mes spent in Switzerland that led to three major series of works that would come to define his artistic output: the Variation series, the Mystischer kopf and the abstrakter kopf series. The Variation series, to which the present work belongs, forms a key stepping stone between the artist’s Fauvist works and the series of abstracted heads that the artist would begin working on in Ascona. In the present Variation, Jawlensky reduces trees, sky and the lake to thick brushstrokes of pure colour. The result is a joyously evocative rendering of a landscape indicative of the tranquility the artist was feeling in his new surroundings.

The artist recalls in his memoirs: 'It was very tiny, our house, and I had no room of my own, only a window which I could call mine. [...]. I realized that my soul had undergone a change as a result of so much suffering and that I therefore had to discover different forms and colours to express what my soul felt. I began my so-called 'variations on a landscape' which was the view from my window - a couple [of] trees, a path and the sky. I started trying to express through painting what I felt nature prompting me to say. By means of hard work and tremendous concentration I gradually found the right colours and form to express what my spiritual self demanded. I painted these colour variations every day, always drawing my inspiration from nature's mood at the t.mes and from the way I felt inside' (quoted in Maria Jawlensky, Lucia Pieroni-Jawlensky & Angelica Jawlensky, Alexej von Jawlensky, Catalogue Raisonné of Oil Paintings 1890 to 1914, London, 1991, vol. 1, p. 32).

The title Variation refers to the various abstracted and meditative iterations of the landscape Jawlensky viewed from his window. Unable to access a studio, the artist worked from his rental home overlooking Lake Geneva. Executed on a linen-finish paper, the present work is archetypal of the support used by the artist for these Variation works and portrays an experimental and clever handling of his medium. Variation marks a pivotal turning point in Jawlensky’s oeuvre as he applies fauvist colours to his paintings in an increasingly abstract and lyrical manner pre-figuring the sense of spirituality that would come to permeate his later works.

Acquired in 1964, the present work has been in the same private collects ion for almost sixty years.