Woman with flower 1938

Mikuláš Galanda made this painting, 'Woman with flower', with gouache and ink on paper. I'm looking at these lovely, soft colours – pinks, blues, a touch of yellow – with some bold black lines that make up this portrait. The woman is holding a red flower. There is a real sense of tenderness here in the way she holds it. I imagine Galanda might have been thinking about beauty, maybe the beauty of everyday life. It’s interesting to see the dialogue happening between the heavy lines, and the flatness of the picture plane. The paint isn't trying to trick you with illusion, instead it revels in its own material reality. What does it mean to depict a body in this way? How does it relate to other modernists such as Picasso or Matisse? What makes it different? I love how painters are always speaking to each other across time, asking questions with paint, not just answering them!