Figure Evolving into Magical Forms 1946

Here we have a Lorser Feitelson drawing, called *Figure Evolving into Magical Forms*, made with ink on paper. These hooded figures really grab me, they're kind of spooky and otherworldly. You sense how the artist allowed the composition to emerge organically. The blank paper lets the lines breathe. Imagine the artist's hand moving swiftly, making marks, cross-hatching, trying to define and clarify the forms in a search for the right shape. There’s something so tender and vulnerable about that quest! The magical forms almost look like free-floating thoughts. What does it mean to ‘evolve’ into a magical form? Feitelson’s automatic approach reminds me of the surrealist drawings of the period. But while I'm sure he looked at the work of other artists, he was on his own journey, transmuting figures into dreams, one line at a time.