Motyl (Butterfly) 1988

Ladislav Cepelák made this print of a butterfly without a date, using a black and white palette to bring this fragile creature into being. It's all about the push and pull of dark and light. You can imagine Cepelák layering the ink, wiping it away, maybe adding more, letting the butterfly emerge through trial, error, and intuition. I really feel for the artist here, imagining him trying to capture something so fleeting and delicate with such a heavy medium. The texture! You can almost feel the way the ink grabs onto the plate, the way the wipe marks create these subtle gradations. The inky dark shapes form the negative space, making the butterfly’s wings almost ghostly, like it's fluttering right on the edge of visibility. That gesture where the wing just kisses the darkness? It communicates a sense of yearning. And, you know, every artist is in conversation with every other artist, across time, inspiring each other. Ultimately, making art is about embracing ambiguity, allowing for multiple interpretations. There's no one way to read this butterfly, and that's the beauty of it.