Portrait of the Writer B.Antonenko Davydovich 1963

Alla Horska’s portrait of B.Antonenko Davydovich is made with ink or paint, and maybe some charcoal – it's hard to tell exactly, which I kind of love. The piece really shows us how artmaking can be a raw, searching process. Look at the planes that create the face. See how she's built it up with layers of grey washes and stark, bold black lines. It's almost sculptural, like she's carving into the paper. Then there’s that fist! It's massive, looming. The knuckles are like chisels and it's so frontal that it almost comes across as aggressive. But it also seems protective, like a shield. The whole thing feels unresolved, in process. Like Horska is wrestling with how to represent this writer, this person. It reminds me a bit of the angst you find in some of Kathe Kollwitz’s prints; that same sense of human struggle made visible in the marks. These artists invite us to dwell in ambiguity, to see art as a continuous conversation rather than a statement of fact.