"I now began to search for a new path in art [from 1914, with the outbreak of World War 1.]. It was a major task. I understood that I did not have to paint what I saw, not even what I felt, but only that which lived within me, in my soul. To put it in symbolic terms, it is like this: I felt within myself, within my breast, the keyboard of an organ and I had to make it resonate. And the nature that was in front of me served me only as a prompter. And that was a key that unlocked this organ and made it resonate. In the beginning it was very difficult. But little by little, it became easy for me to use colours and forms to find what was within my soul."
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In his letter, 12 June, 1938 to P. Willibrord Verkade, as quoted in Alexej von Jawlensky, der Maler und Mensch, Clemens Weiler; Wiesbaden 1955, pp. 39 ff
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Alexej_von_Jawlensky
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Alexej von Jawlensky
Alexej Georgewitsch von Jawlensky (March 13, 1864 – March 15, 1941) was a Russian Expressionist painter active in Germany, Munich in the 'Blaue Reiter / Blue Rider' and after 1914 in Switzerland, together with Marianne von Werefkin, many years his life-companion, till 1921.
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