Cows 1936

Mikuláš Galanda made this print of cows, its date unknown, with strokes that seem simple, but they’re not. What might Galanda have been thinking? I imagine he was trying to find a meeting point between solidity and looseness; the tension between the two animates the composition. How do you make a cow look like a cow, but also a feeling? There's something very tender about these cows and how they huddle together, how they relate to each other. We can think of them as shapes, forms, and lines, and how the artist is working with this material. The lines are sparse but sure, scratching out the forms on the surface. Like a folk tale, they feel embedded with memory. It’s like he's asking us, can we even think without images? I really feel artists are in an ongoing conversation with each other, across time, inspiring one another’s creativity. The ambiguity embraces uncertainty, allowing for multiple interpretations.