Jawlensky’s whole career can be seen as an ongoing experimentation in the combination of colour, line, and form to express the artist’s inner self. Jawlensky’s mature work was dominated by several series of paintings on the theme of the human face, throughout which his treatment of the features becomes increasingly stylised and abstracted. The typically long, U-shaped face seen in Schräge Augen with a strong symmetrical structure was first conceived in 1918, and Jawlensky worked on this series until 1935. A growing interest in Indian philosophy and the life of Indian yogis appear to have a strong influence on the series, as suggested by the meditative closed eyes and the overall reduction of the composition to the purest pictorial elements of colour and line. Gradually abandoning the signs of individuality and character, and focusing on the formal elements in his painting, in his mature work, such as Schräge Augen, Jawlensky arrived at a style through which he was able to convey a sense of harmony and universal spirituality. ‘Around the year 1930 – his colouring becomes darker and richer in contrasts. There is a greater stress on the individual forms. The colour takes on an increasingly powerful inner luminosity. Individual brushstrokes start to become visible. The whole head assumes the power of an emblem’ (C. Weiler, op. cit., 1970, p. 17).
In a letter dated June 12, 1938 to his friend and fellow painter Father Willibrord Verkade, Jawlensky wrote ‘I went on painting these variations for several years, and then it became necessary for me to find a form for the face, for I realized that great art was only to be painted with religious feeling. And that was something I could bring only to the human face. I realized that the artist must express in his art through forms and colours that within him which is divine. That is why the work of art is a visible God, and why art is 'a longing for God’’ (quoted in ibid., p. 108). His fellow artists were also aware of the religious undertones of these facial landscapes and could see the connection of Jawlensky’s ~uvre to his exposure to Russian icons and folk art. Amongst them was Karl Schmidt-Rotluff who wrote in a letter to Jawlensky in 1934 'I acknowledge to you my admiration for the work you have created in all these years, which began with strong full-blooded colours and has led you to the quiet, spiritualized pictures which I would call truly modern holy images. I always feel that in them an old icon painter of your people has come alive again – so authentic, pious and meditative are they that there is nothing to resemble them in our time’ (quoted in ibid., p.110).
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