Lunch Counter 1930

Mathilde Schaefer made this print called 'Lunch Counter', but we don't know exactly when. Look at the way she's built up the image with these tiny, deliberate marks. It's like she's thinking about each line, each shadow, as a decision, a step in the process. I love the way the texture comes alive here, you can almost feel the grit of the paper. The cross-hatching gives everything a moody, almost dreamlike quality. See how the dark, dense marks make the figures in the foreground seem so present, while the background fades into a blur of glass bottles and indistinct shapes. It feels like a memory, or a fleeting moment captured in time. Look at the woman's hands, so carefully rendered and poised above the geometrically-precise squares of cake. Her face seems tired or preoccupied. Schaefer reminds me a little of Kathe Kollwitz, another artist who used printmaking to capture the everyday struggles and quiet dramas of life. Like Kollwitz, Schaefer invites us to slow down, to observe, and to find beauty in the ordinary.