Zwei weibliche Akte, links ein Bündel Stroh, rechts eine Schale mit Früchten in der Hand haltend 1912

Hermann Lismann made this watercolor of two female nudes, with straw and fruit, sometime in the early twentieth century. The palette is muted; thin washes define the figures, but it's the dark ink of the outlines that really does the work here. There's a beautiful economy in the way the bodies are rendered. It is a kind of drawing-thinking, where line and tone work together to create form and volume. I am particularly struck by the contrast between the darker figure on the left and the paler one on the right. The skin tones aren't just different, they imply different ways of being, like day and night or earth and sky. The drawing, the materiality of the ink line, holds everything together. This piece reminds me of Paula Modersohn-Becker, another German artist working around the same time. Both artists share an interest in representing the female form with honesty and without idealization. Art is an ongoing conversation, isn't it? A way of seeing and rethinking the world, one mark at a time.