Perhaps you have heard that Baroness Werefkin died in February. It was a great blow to me. Yes, indeed, sooner or later we have to pay for our mistak… - Alexej von Jawlensky

..human faces are for me only suggestions to see something else in them – the life of colour, seized with a lover's passion.

This Spring of 1911 Marianne von Werefkin [his former study-mate in Russia and in fact his life-comapnion for many years, but never married] Andrei, Helene and I went to Prerow on the Baltic [coast]. For me that summer meant a great step forward in my art. I painted my finest landscapes there as well as large figure paintings in powerful, glowing colours and not at all naturalistic or objective. I used a great deal of red, blue, orange, cadmium yellow and chromium-oxide green. My forms were very strongly contoured in Prussian blue, and came with tremendous power from an inner ecstasy. 'Der Buckel', 'Violetter Turban', 'Selbstporträt'.. ..were created in this way. It was a turning-point in my art. It was in these years, up to 1914, just before the war [World War 1.], that I painted my most powerful works, referred to as the pré-war works.

I am now mainly painting faces and landscapes; I am obsessed day and night by the vision of faces and colours. And the spiritual vision is my mystical world.