Woman with a Curl on Her Forehead

The woman is Helene Nesnakomoff. She had been in Jawlensky's household since the 1890s, they married in 1922, and she sat for him more often than anyone else. Her surname is built on the Russian word for a stranger, a person unknown. In 1913 Jawlensky changed the shape of his heads. He gave up the square formats he had been using and went tall and narrow, so the face stretches to fill the height, while the colour cools and blue takes the lead from red and green. The eyes are widened until their line crosses the whole width of the head, and the nose falls through that line, so the face is held together by an upright and a horizontal inside it. The curl on the forehead is what the title holds onto. The picture reached Wiesbaden in 1949, bought by the museum's director Clemens Weiler for the city where Jawlensky had spent his last 20 years. Weiler went on to compile the catalogue of the painter's work.