Decembre (December) 1962

Gy Szabo Bela made this print, ‘Decembre,’ in 1962. Look at the way Bela's hand patiently chiseled away at the block to make this picture. It’s really a conversation between black and white, substance and space. I love how the texture becomes everything. Each little dot, like a tiny seed, is planted to suggest the shape of a tree, or the fall of light on a snowy bank. The way the marks build up around the trunks gives real weight to the trees, especially the way the branches reach out and hang heavy in the air. The negative space feels as dense as the positive space, making it feel like an almost palpable presence. It reminds me of woodcuts by artists like Ernst Ludwig Kirchner or even some of the Northern Renaissance guys like Altdorfer. There's a similar kind of gritty, earnest quality to the work.