[title not known] 1940

Editor: This untitled watercolor by Edward Burra shows figures in both a stark foreground and a receding, classical architecture. The red figures in the foreground are quite unsettling. What do you make of this rather bizarre scene? Curator: Bizarre is spot on. Burra was drawn to the strange and the grotesque. Here, the compressed space and clashing scales create a sort of fever dream. The figures, are they praying, or are they trapped? Editor: Trapped, maybe? I didn't even notice the skeleton lurking on the stairs there. Curator: Exactly! It's this unease, this sense of something not quite right, that makes Burra so compelling. I wonder, what's the story behind that long corridor? Is it heaven, or a dead end? Editor: I find myself pondering that very question now. Definitely a lot to think about with this piece.