Waterfront 1936

Albert Bloch made this print called Waterfront, and it's all about the way he's put down these marks, these tiny, flickering lines to make a whole world. I can imagine him, with the metal plate, the acid, the careful wiping. Maybe he was thinking about bridges, about how they connect places, or maybe he was just drawn to the way the light hit the water that day. Look at how he's layered the lines, so close together, to give the buildings weight. There's a real sense of atmosphere, a kind of quiet stillness. Bloch would have been looking at artists like Whistler and maybe even some of the German Expressionists, trying to find his own way of seeing and showing the world. Painting is always like that, a conversation across time, with artists picking up on each other's ideas, pushing them further, making them their own. It's a beautiful thing.