Abstract Head: Symphony in Pink

In 1929 a group in Wiesbaden formed an association to support Jawlensky by subscription. Members paid a yearly sum and each received a work from him in return, an arrangement organised by the collector Hanna Bekker vom Rath, who had met the painter three years earlier. That is how this small head reached Robert von Hirsch, a Frankfurt collector, and in 1932 he gave it to the Städel. Early in 1933 Hirsch moved himself, his business and his collection to Switzerland, and the museum's inventory book records the painting withdrawn that same year and returned in 1964. It is one of the Abstract Heads, oil on canvas laid down on cardboard and barely 37 centimetres tall, monogrammed A.J. at the lower left, dated 29 at the lower right, and inscribed on the back in his own hand, Symphonie in Rosa, 1929.