A study, preparational work (28.06.1994) 1994

Alfred Freddy Krupa created this red pencil study on paper in 1994. The sketch presents a hand, seemingly reaching or descending. Krupa was born in 1971, in what was then Yugoslavia. His early life was profoundly impacted by the social and political turmoil of the region. When this work was made in 1994, the artist was a young man living through the crisis and violence of the Croatian War of Independence. This study of a hand, rendered with such delicate, tentative lines, speaks to precarity and fragility. The choice of the hand is particularly evocative, suggesting the potential for action, but also the vulnerability inherent in the act of reaching out. Perhaps in this work, we see an echo of the artist's own search for stability, in a world turned upside down by conflict.