Untitled (Standing Woman) c. 1930

Herbert Ferber made this etching of a standing woman. The lines are loose and free, as though he’s letting his hand wander across the plate. The composition is simple but the emotional and intellectual resonances are complex. I wonder what Ferber was thinking as he created her exaggerated form. Is she a figure of strength or vulnerability? The buttons down her front suggest she’s wearing some kind of constraining garment, while the form of the body insists on freedom. The hatching and the inking are inconsistent, it is not smoothed or blended, it is like a question mark around every line. There's a conversation happening here, and in fact, Ferber was part of a vibrant community of artists and sculptors in New York. Like them, Ferber explored the human form but ultimately moved away from representation towards abstraction. Perhaps he found the ambiguity of abstraction closer to the truth.