Old House in Germany 1957

Mstislav Dobuzhinsky made this drawing of an old house in Germany with charcoal and color pencil, though there is no date attached to the piece. Look at the tops of those roofs! There is a really playful use of color and mark-making here. The reddish-brown tiles on the rooftops have been created using energetic hatching, giving the image an expressive, textural feel. The artist isn’t trying to hide anything; the marks are all there on the surface. And the laundry hanging out to dry – it’s such a simple, everyday motif, but it adds so much to the scene. The eye is drawn to those white rectangles blowing in the wind and somehow those light patches are the heart of this image. It reminds me a little of some of the architectural drawings of Lyonel Feininger, especially in its use of line and geometry, but there is also a human touch that is all Dobuzhinsky’s own. What I like about this image is that it doesn't try to resolve into a definitive statement. It’s more like a question, an open-ended exploration.