Marianne von Werefkin citations (28 citations)

“I am more a man than a woman. Only the need to please and compassion turn me into a woman. I am not a man, I am not a woman, I am I.”

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Marianne von Werefkin

written in her Journal, 1905
Quote of Werefkin's Journal, 1905; in Briefe an einen Unbekannten, ed. Clemens Weiler, Cologne: Verlag M. DuMont, 1960, p. 50
1895 - 1905

“.. I need to immerse my gaze in your eyes, it is in their mirror that I see myself as I would like to be, and it is only in seeing myself as I feel I should be. I think, therefore I am, my Beautiful One, to both of us, every day we recreate the world, every day a paradise falls in our hands, to darken in the dust of many paradises... The paradises will fall in our hands, will sink in the dust and will be born again according to our will.”

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Marianne von Werefkin

Vol. 1: 'My beautiful One, My Unique!', pp. 130-140
1895 - 1905, Lettres à un Inconnu, 1901 – 1905; Museo Communale, Ascona

“.. upon the frightening gray sky one can see a black mountain, completely black even with black houses, and all of a sudden a fire-red house appears, a violet path with snowflakes and on the path a black chain of people like crows.”

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Marianne von Werefkin

Quote from Werefkin's letter to Alexej von Jawlensky, 1910 Lithuanian Martynas-Mazvydas-National Library, Vilnius, RS (F19-1458,1.31) as reprinted in Weidle, Marianne Werefkin, Die Farbe beisst mich ans Herz, 108; as quoted in 'Identity and Reminiscence in Marianne Werefkin's Return Home', c. 1909; Adrienne Kochman http://www.19thc-artworldwide.org/spring06/52-spring06/spring06article/171-ambiguity-of-home-identity-and-reminiscence-in-marianne-werefkins-return-home-c-1909
1906 - 1911

“I want to work. It is an obsession. I am gnawed at the heart by an excruciating desire to manipulate color... I see figures, with an incredible intensity, pass before my eyes. Let us analyze this – if it is possible to toss it. Why do you no longer work? Why work again? Faith has left me – the habit of putting myself into the background, has done the rest. Am I a true artist? Yes, yes, yes. Am I a woman? Alas. Yes, yes, yes. Are the two [very probably Jawlensky & Marinanne] able to work as a pair? No, no, no. Who will take up the desires -?... The work of my life, this talent [Jawlensky] that I protect with all my interest, with all my affection, it must be alone in the dwelling. Reason says, calm yourself. But the great passion in me, and my call to work, destroys all the calm acquisitions of my life.”

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Marianne von Werefkin

Vol. 1: 'My beautiful One, My Unique!', pp. 130-140
1895 - 1905, Lettres à un Inconnu, 1901 – 1905; Museo Communale, Ascona

“I save myself in a church. Dark, empty. Lights flickering before icons. One sings everything that one has sung before in the past. Some black figures - and the heart is heavy. The tears take one's breath away and the past rises up again. Home.... in Peter's office [Marianne's brother, governor of Kovno Province, Lithuania], my entire soul starts to ache for him, for that battle for everything that is sweet and good, which is called Russian life. Empty, empty in the house, no one. Whoever comes - doesn't get his fill of him. And then such a heated rush of love rips out of the [visitor's] heart, begging one's pardon and forgetting the trouble behind, that the whole house swells.”

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Marianne von Werefkin

1906 - 1911
Source: a letter to Alexej von Jawlensky, between December 1909 and Spring 1910; as quoted in 'Ambiguity of Home: Identity and Reminiscence in Marianne Werefkin's Return Home, c. 1909', Adrienne Kochman http://www.19thc-artworldwide.org/spring06/52-spring06/spring06article/171-ambiguity-of-home-identity-and-reminiscence-in-marianne-werefkins-return-home-c-1909

“I adore my life: it is filled with so much true poetry, fine feelings, things many have no idea about. I despise my life, which, being rich, allowed itself to be crammed into the confines of conventions. Between these two opinions pulsates my soul always longing for beauty and good.”

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Marianne von Werefkin

1895 - 1905
Source: Lettres à un Inconnu, 1902 (Notebook I, p. 234) - Aux sources de l'expressionnisme. Presentation par Gabrielle Dufour-Kowalska. Klincksieck, 1999. p. 101

“Before the blank canvas, the unrealized work, completely in the artist’s head, must seem to him equal to the greatest. To say that which has never been said – is the reason for all artistic work. But only outside of the work should the artist worthily get down on his knees before the great artists of the past... Rembrandt in our days would be Rembrandt again, because the work of the master is his self. But in order to be Rembrandt in our days, he would have used new ways that would give a new culture.”

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Marianne von Werefkin

Vol. 1: 'My beautiful One, My Unique!', pp. 130-140
1895 - 1905, Lettres à un Inconnu, 1901 – 1905; Museo Communale, Ascona

“I love Russia as few people do - I've demonstrated it my whole life, but those who plow here in Russia, are not my brothers. I heed a Russian life with my entire existence, I look into the eyes of all the people around me, nothing... And the main horror is that we long for Russia and here no one loves her, they only mimic those feelings.”

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Marianne von Werefkin

Werefkin to Jawlensky, 1909-1910, fond 19-1458, pp. 35–36 as reprinted in Lauchkaite-Surgailene, Lauchkaite-Surgailene, "Marianna Verevkina. Zhizn' v iskusstve," Vilnius, no. 3, sec. 15, 136
1906 - 1911

“And I go to my room and stretch out my arms to the West—that it is far away [from here], that I will someday return. Outside those painful sensations—it is horrible to be before these people and their lives. Service and family troubles -a hard beginning, pay raise, promotion - sweet dreams, scandal - daily bread, [This is a figurative reference to Our Lord's Prayer, "give us this day our daily bread.."] and their happiness reminds me sweetly, of those who buy "for the people," and whose food you wouldn't put in your mouth. I think of Munich and of my health. All that is here is suffering and this horror of beauty and this horrible life and this overbearing literature, and the complete superfluousness of art.”

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Marianne von Werefkin

1906 - 1911
Source: a letter to Alexej von Jawlensky, between December 1909 and Spring 1910; as quoted in 'Ambiguity of Home: Identity and Reminiscence in Marianne Werefkin's Return Home, c. 1909', Adrienne Kochman http://www.19thc-artworldwide.org/spring06/52-spring06/spring06article/171-ambiguity-of-home-identity-and-reminiscence-in-marianne-werefkins-return-home-c-1909

“I am a woman, I lack every [ability for] creation. I can understand everything and cannot create... I don't have the words to express my ideal. I am looking for the person, the man, who can give this ideal form. As a woman, wanting someone who could give the internal world expression, I met Jawlensky…”

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Marianne von Werefkin

1895 - 1905
Variante: I am a woman, I lack every [ability for] creation. I can understand everything and cannot create.. .I don't have the words to express my ideal. I am looking for the person, the man, who can give this ideal form. As a woman, wanting someone who could give the internal world expression, I met Jawlensky...

“Oh, If I had been able to realize you with my hand. If the painted canvas was able to give me your dear image. The labor was you ['The Unknown'] the work of art was me – I have kissed your head, I have looked elsewhere… You are neither good, nor charitable. You do not know how to love. – You are only great and beautiful. I sacrificed to tenderness and still, my self, you do not know how to love.”

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Marianne von Werefkin

Vol. 1: 'My beautiful One, My Unique!', pp. 130-140
1895 - 1905, Lettres à un Inconnu, 1901 – 1905; Museo Communale, Ascona

“.. I want a lovely life; in order for it to be, harmony and style are necessary. I avow mine to the key of aesthetic sentiment – the constant permanent creation everywhere and in every one. All is false there, all is true. The truth is the desire to see falsely. I do not want the naked truth; it is the principle of my life. It is that which makes my life one which is artistic and complete. Feelings, events, people and things, such as they are, are nothing to me. I wish them invented, illusory, false in so far as true life and in so far as art.”

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Marianne von Werefkin

Vol. 1: 'My beautiful One, My Unique!', pp. 130-140
1895 - 1905, Lettres à un Inconnu, 1901 – 1905; Museo Communale, Ascona

“A man with taste is the same as a woman with taste. Man invents his home, woman - her dress. Being an artist means having an individual, distinct from all other people's perception and concept of every single thing. Being an artist does not mean possessing a faculty of combining lines and paints, being artful in this or that sort of art, but having a world inside oneself and individual forms to express it.”

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Marianne von Werefkin

1895 - 1905
Source: Lettres à un Inconnu, (Notebook II, p. 8) - Aux sources de l'expressionnisme. Presentation par Gabrielle Dufour-Kowalska. Klincksieck, 1999. p. 106

“All bores me in the world of facts, I see an end, a limit to all things and my heart thirsts for the infinite and for eternity. How to speak of the feeling, so serious, that has seized me?... Human activity has its greatest efforts always fall back on broken wings. Oh, thus I close my eyes. I do not wish to see, to hear, to love, or to act. Only artistic creation, infinite, unlimited, work of god in man, appears desirable to me. It only is the truth and only it is the illusion…”

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Marianne von Werefkin

Vol. 1: 'My beautiful One, My Unique!', pp. 130-140
1895 - 1905, Lettres à un Inconnu, 1901 – 1905; Museo Communale, Ascona

“A colossal orange moon rolls as an unbelievable ball against intense blue. The silhouettes of the houses flank this blue on both sides, forming a childishly rigid little frame. As if we witness the birth of the song of flowers which are subordinated to this blue and dominated by the orange moon.”

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Marianne von Werefkin

she wrote in 1905
1895 - 1905
Source: Lettres a un Inconnu, (Notebook III, p. 120) - Aux sources de l'expressionnisme. Presentation par Gabrielle Dufour-Kowalska. Klincksieck, 1999. p. 156

“One life is far too little for all the things I feel within myself, and I invent other lives within and outside myself for them. A whirling crowd of invented beings surrounds me and prevents me from seeing reality. Color bites at my heart.”

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Marianne von Werefkin

from her short biography on the website of museum 'Lenbachhause', undated http://www.lenbachhaus.de/collection/the-blue-rider/werefkin/?L=1
1906 - 1911

“Any art is a concentrated feeling of love elevated to a world view and translated into an artistic language of symbols.”

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Marianne von Werefkin

Quote from Werefkin's lecture in 1914; as quoted in M. K. ČIURLIONIS AND MARIANNE VON WEREFKIN: THEIR PATHS AND WATERSHEDS, by Laima Lauckaité; Institute of Culture, Philosophy and Art, Vilnius
Werefkin gave her lecture during a regular Art Society meeting, 22 March 1914
after 1911

“Art is not hysteria. Art is as natural to man as is thought, it is a normal function of his brain. Art is observation and consciousness. It is not an instinct, vague, indecisive, sickly. Art is an eternal source – life, and an unlimited expression, the individual. These two elements, well-adapted, make masterpieces... All speech that a human being finds to give a new impression is of art. Why believe that the speech must be epileptic to become art?... Such is art. It is the product of life and the individual. It is born from their clash, from the received impression. But this impression is made once, for then it is no longer, neither life nor the individual..”

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Marianne von Werefkin

Vol. 1: 'My beautiful One, My Unique!', pp. 130-140
1895 - 1905, Lettres à un Inconnu, 1901 – 1905; Museo Communale, Ascona

“You for whom I have looked so hard without ever finding. You whom I have longed for, called after, without ever seeing you come, you who are always present without ever existing – I am writing to you now. You who are basically only myself, but a much bigger and more noble self, an ingenious self, a self far from me, as real as the whole distance between the dream and the reality.”

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Marianne von Werefkin

Vol. 1: 'My beautiful One, My Unique!', pp. 130-140
1895 - 1905, Lettres à un Inconnu, 1901 – 1905; Museo Communale, Ascona

“My eyes are magical glass [when looking at] the outside world, and it can transform a lot into bewitching beauty. Paris, Munich.... they're all the same. The country is nice, because it is closer to nature and bad because we [Werefkin and Jawlensky] are no longer people from nature. I saw this at Blagodat. The more a person improves himself, the more one is doomed to loneliness. One doesn't need friends, one needs oneself and anybody who loves you like themselves.”

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Marianne von Werefkin

Quote of Marianne Werefkin, in a letter to Jawlensky, 1909-1910, fond 19-1460, 38-39 as reprinted in Lauchkaite-Surgailene, Vilnius no. 3, sec. 16, 136;; as quoted in 'Identity and Reminiscence in Marianne Werefkin's Return Home', c. 1909; Adrienne Kochman http://www.19thc-artworldwide.org/spring06/52-spring06/spring06article/171-ambiguity-of-home-identity-and-reminiscence-in-marianne-werefkins-return-home-c-1909
'Blagodat' is the name of the family landed estate in the Russian country where Jawlensky often accompanied Werefkin before their common move to Munich.
1906 - 1911

“Why should we do as those who do not have other joys than to believe, as night falls, in their double beds... that it is to be great and sanctified by love to jostle the companions of their bed. Our passion must be like our love – illusory and artistic, having no other end than the desire to be beautiful. To remain beautiful in unsated [unstated? ] passion…”

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Marianne von Werefkin

Vol. 1: 'My beautiful One, My Unique!', pp. 130-140
1895 - 1905, Lettres à un Inconnu, 1901 – 1905; Museo Communale, Ascona

“The artist is the only one who detaches himself from life, opposes his personality against it, he is the only one who orders things as he wishes them to be in place of things as they are. Thus for him life is not a fait accompli, it is something to remake, to do again. He takes possession of his gifts in order to continue, to change, He makes his choice, it is he who creates the conceptions of beautiful and ugly, those are the things to preserve, the things to change. At the seat of the things that it is necessary to change he puts his desires, his aspirations, in one word, his personality…”

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Marianne von Werefkin

Vol. 1: 'My beautiful One, My Unique!', pp. 130-140
1895 - 1905, Lettres à un Inconnu, 1901 – 1905; Museo Communale, Ascona

“Convince yourself. Kovno is a treasure-trove for artists. It is gloomy, the lamps don't make it lighter and the streets are getting darker. Their violet windows hover threateningly in the darkness. The elusive lines of low houses, on them - the glimmer of green and red flames - illuminating rows of shops. Bright green bright red stripes [all] fall on the violet sidewalk. And all those shadows are full of people who only speak about one thing, about love, in the dialect, Polish or broken Russian. Whispers and loud words touch the silence, like the green and red bands of light - the darkness of the night. Something terrible, terrible lies over everything, I feel a shudder, it seems I am in another world, far away from real life.”

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Marianne von Werefkin

Quote from Werefkin's letter to Alexej von Jawlensky, between December 1909 and Spring 1910; as cited in 'Ambiguity of Home: Identity and Reminiscence in Marianne Werefkin's Return Home, c. 1909', Adrienne Kochman http://www.19thc-artworldwide.org/spring06/52-spring06/spring06article/171-ambiguity-of-home-identity-and-reminiscence-in-marianne-werefkins-return-home-c-1909
1906 - 1911

“.. Oh my dear friend, you whose voice called me towards my beautiful past, oh how I love you because you are young, you serve the idea, you understand the beauty of a life devoted completely to abstraction. Oh the devil you have done me, and the good of this devil. There is an atrocious page in my existence... I am not a woman. Neither love nor the family satisfies me. I don’t like the baby. I detest the household. I love all works of the human genius, I adore art the beauties of nature and of the heart. The beautiful, the beautiful in all such as love and such as life.”

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Marianne von Werefkin

Vol. 1: 'My beautiful One, My Unique!', pp. 130-140
1895 - 1905, Lettres à un Inconnu, 1901 – 1905; Museo Communale, Ascona

“I love what doesn't exist. I love love that doesn't exist, which extends above you like an invisible city, like uncapturable smoke, a love that evokes a longing for enchanted lands, which fills the head with magical scenes, which confers strength and grandeur, which leads all beings to perfection, which adorns you in marvelous clothes, which increases painting abilities, which crowns you king of all goals, which makes you a god of creation.”

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Marianne von Werefkin

Quote of Werefkin from Briefe an einen Unbekannten, 1901-1905. Köln, 1960, p. 19; as cited in M. K. ČIURLIONIS AND MARIANNE VON WEREFKIN: THEIR PATHS AND WATERSHEDS, by Laima Lauckaité; Institute of Culture, Philosophy and Art, Vilnius
1895 - 1905

“Five years ago I spent two and a half months in Berlin, and every day I visited the museum to have at least a brief look at this divine masterpiece [a portrait of the soldier of fortune, Alessandro del Borro, then attributed to Diego Velazquez, and later to an unknown master], and every day my soul sang in response to it stronger and stronger. I was very sick then, and that genius alone reconciled me to my life when there was so much suffering in it. Looking at his creation, at these lines, at these half-tones (remember that shadowed jaw against the background or the column against the dress), at all this charm of the art, at this grand style, I started to want to live again, to see it again and again, to live on by painting and perhaps by painting alone.”

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Marianne von Werefkin

Quote in Werefkin's Letter to Igor Grabar on August 10, 1895; Department of Manuscripts of the State Tretyakov Gallery, Fund 106. Item 3242
1895 - 1905

“.. he [ Jawlensky ] is the creation of my life, my ultimate goal, my torture.”

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Marianne von Werefkin

Note in her Journal, c. 1921; as cited in Lettres a un Inconnu, (Notebook III, p. 120) - Aux sources de l'expressionnisme. Presentation par Gabrielle Dufour-Kowalska. Klincksieck, 1999. p. 107 (notebook II, p.10).
after 1911