Marianne von Werefkin was a Russian artist whose shimmering tempera paintings contributed to the discourse of the Blauer Reiter group. Through self-portraits and landscapes, she conveyed the otherworldly distortion experienced in profound emotional states. “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,” she once mused. “A whirling crowd of invented beings surrounds me and prevents me from seeing reality. Color bites at my heart.” Born Marianna Wladimirowna Werewkina on September 10, 1860 in Tula, Russian Empire (currently Lithuania), she began taking drawing classes at that age of 14 and was a private student of the renowned realist painter Ilya Repin. In 1892, she met the impoverished artist Alexej von Jawlensky and moved with him to Munich in 1896. Their turbulent relationship was more beneficial to Jawlensky than Werefkin, as she financially supported both of them while he pursued his career. Werefkin went so far as to establish a Salon in Munich for the sake of exhibiting and championing his work. Influenced by the works of Edvard Munch as well as her conversations with Wassily Kandinksy, his lover Gabriele Münter, and Jawlensky, Werefkin probed deeper into expressive uses of color. At the onset of World War I, she and Jawlensky moved to neutral Switzerland, with their troubled relationship ending in 1921. Werefkin died in relative poverty on February 6, 1938 in Ascona, Switzerland. Today, her works are held in the collections of the Lenbachhaus in Munich, the Milwaukee Art Museum, and the Museo Comunale d’Arte Moderna in Ascona, among others.