Four Compositions (sketches) 1964

Hryhorii Havrylenko made this pencil sketch, 'Four Compositions', sometime in the mid-20th century. It's all about the push and pull of shapes, you know? Like how sometimes you just scribble to figure things out. Look closely and you'll see the paper's texture doing its own thing under all those lines, a real player in the game. Havrylenko isn’t trying to hide the process; it's right there, front and center. The diagonal shading in each square is like a vibe, setting the mood. The dark bars jump out, like letters in an alphabet we can't quite read. The whole thing feels like a puzzle, each block a different way of seeing the same idea. It's got this quiet energy, reminds me of Sol LeWitt's wall drawings, where the idea is as important as the execution. It's like Havrylenko is saying, "Here's a thought, now what can we do with it?"