Alexei Jawlensky. Alexej Georgewitsch von Jawlensky was a Russian expressionist painter active in Germany.
   He was a key member of the New Munich Artist's Association, Der Blaue Reiter group and later the Die Blaue Vier. Alexej von Jawlensky was born in Torzhok, a town in Tver Governorate, Russia, as the fifth child of Georgi von Jawlensky and his wife Alexandra.
   At the age of ten he moved with his family to Moscow. After a few years of military training, he became interested in painting, visiting the Moscow World Exposition c. 1880.
   Thanks to his good social connections, he managed to get himself posted to St. Petersburg and, from 1889 to 1896, studied at the art academy there, while also discharging his military duties. Jawlensky gained admittance to the circle of the renowned Russian realist painter Ilya Repin.
   There he met Marianne von Werefkin, a wealthy artist and former student of Repin. He requested to be her protégé, and Werefkin decided to put her work on hold to promote his work and provide him with a comfortable lifestyle. Jawlensky and Werefkin moved to Munich in 1894, where he studied in the private school of Anton Ažbe. In 1905 Jawlensky visited Ferdinand Hodler, and two years later he began his long friendship with Jan Verkade and met Paul Sérusier. Together, Verkade and Sérusier transmitted to Jawlensky both practical and theoretical elements of the work of the Nabis, and Synthe
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