Into the night
The large-format painting "Into the Night" is one of the most important works in Marianne von Werefkin's oeuvre. It was created around 1910, at the height of the activities of the Neue Künstlervereinigung München (NKVM), which was composed by her, Alexej von Jawlensky, Wassily Kandinsky, Gabriele Münter and others had been founded the year before and can be described as the forerunner of the Blue Rider.
"Into the Night" was shown in September 1910 at the 2nd NVKM exhibition in the Thannhauser Gallery in Munich. Werefkin was represented here with five other paintings, "Into the Night" was shown in the accompanying catalog as one of the few of the 115 works in the exhibition. This underscores the importance attached to the image not only by the artist but by the group as a whole.
The depiction of the painting, which is demanding in terms of format alone - it is one of Werefkin's greatest works - leads to the center of her artistic statement: It is a nocturnal scene after a stage performance in an open street, in the front you can see the deserted, simple benches for the Viewers. In the left corner there is a makeshift cloth for the stage, in front of it are two actors in their costumes. The king in the red cloak seems to harass the figure in front of him in unspoken conflict. The stage situation, the three mute female figures in the doorways, which, as the artist often addresses, seem to indicate a strained gender relationship, and the expressive colors are central elements of Werefkin's tempera paintings, which deal with the subject of human existence and its being at the mercy of invisible forces inner and outer nature, be it psychological sensitivities or fateful powers.
Lenbachhaus
