Preparatory drawing for Modern Masters Tapestries: Portrait Head c. 1960s - 1970s

This ‘Preparatory drawing for Modern Masters Tapestries: Portrait Head’ was made by Ernest Trova, but the date is unknown and it looks like it was a plan for a weaving. What’s fascinating here is the interplay between flatness and form; Trova uses bold, flat colors to define the contours of a head in profile. Look at how the bands of purple, pink, and yellow stack together to create this shape. The application is super smooth, almost like printmaking, but the colors vibrate against each other. They describe an image, but they do so in a way that maintains a visual distance. There's something so calculated about the composition, a real precision in the way he’s broken down the human form into these geometric shapes. It reminds me a little of how Alex Katz flattens out his figures with a graphic sensibility. Ultimately, I think this piece reveals how art-making is as much about construction and process as it is about representation. It makes me think about how we build up our understanding of the world, one layer at a time.