El Jugador (Gambler) 1942

José Guadalupe Posada made this tiny print, ‘El Jugador’, with metal engraving, sometime before 1913. It's all about the frantic energy of the moment, captured with these really stark blacks and whites. You can feel the artist thinking through the image, almost sketching with the metal tools, letting the lines find their way. Look at the gambler's face – it’s a mess of lines, but they come together to show total desperation. Cards fly around him like birds, each one carefully rendered. You get the sense Posada wasn’t trying to hide the work, he’s really into the physicality of cutting into the metal, making each mark count. Posada’s work reminds me a bit of Philip Guston, who was also a master of the grotesque, using simple means to get at something profound. Art's not about answers, right? It’s more about opening up space for questions.