Daylabourers with Wheelbarrows 1927

Vilmos Aba-Novak made this painting, Daylabourers with Wheelbarrows, with loose brushstrokes, mostly blues, yellows, and greens, so it feels light, even fleeting, as if caught in motion. The brushwork is so free, so intuitive, that it’s easy to imagine him wrestling with the scene, trying to nail down the essence of labor, the weight and burden of it all. What was it like for him to create this world on canvas? The paint seems almost scrubbed into the surface in places, with other areas left raw and exposed. I love the way the yellow highlights seem to dance across the scene, adding a shimmer of energy. And the way those marks become solid, almost sculptural. Each gesture feels so charged, so full of intention, like Aba-Novak is trying to capture not just the scene, but the feeling of being there, in the thick of it. Painters are always talking to each other across time, riffing on each other’s ideas, pushing the boundaries of what paint can do. They remind us that there’s no one way to see, no one way to interpret the world around us.