Noc a Její Kouzla 1946

'Night and Its Charms' by Václav Zykmund is a small black-and-white print from 1948. I love imagining Zykmund making this, hunched over a metal plate, carefully etching away at its surface, trying to conjure a world out of darkness. It's all about contrasts, right? Black ink against the white of the paper, the hard lines of buildings against more organic shapes, which look like figures but could also be trees, or some kind of strange hybrid. Those circles running down the center of the forms feel like eyes, or maybe seeds, or the phases of the moon. I think Zykmund is in conversation with artists like Max Ernst, or maybe even some of the Surrealist photographers who were playing with light and shadow, trying to find the weirdness lurking beneath the surface of everyday life. Painting and printmaking lets you explore that ambiguity. It's not just about what you see, but what you feel, what you imagine.