Expressive in strong colors: In 1911 Alexej von Jawlensky painted intense landscapes and portraits. He left Murnau and stayed in Prerow on the Baltic Sea. There he created the painting "Violet Turban". It shows Jawlensky's future wife Helene Nesnakomoff. When Jawlensky painted her, she was 30 years old. At this time, she was still the maid of Jawlenky's artist friend Marianne von Werefkin - and also the mother of his son. During these years, Jawlensky followed the path of his friend Wassily Kandinsky with interest. Kandinsky became more and more abstract in his paintings. Jawlensky, on the other hand, remained representational - albeit with more stylistic freedom. He chose a blue background for the portrait of his partner. Helene was wearing a red top and a violet turban. Large areas of color frame her face. Her almond-shaped eyes looked confident. Lips, eyes, eyebrows and nose are drawn in sweeping lines. Modulating areas of color in pure yellow, orange, violet, pink, red and green appear to have been applied quickly one after the other. The work is similar to the paintings “The Hunchback”, “The Hunchback I” and another portrait of Helene – “Woman with a Red Blouse”, which were also created in 1911. At the same time, “The Violet Turban” appears to be a counterpart to Jawlensky’s famous, defiant and proud self-portrait from the same year. In comparison to previous portraits, all of these pictures show how Jawlensky developed further in his work. He made a major turn in his art in the summer in Prerow. This is what Jawlensky himself noted in retrospect. “The Violet Turban” was presented in the winter of 1911/1912 at the third exhibition of the New Artists’ Association in Munich in the Modern Gallery Thannhauser – at the same time as the first exhibition of the “Blue Rider”.