Woman's Shoe 1935 - 1942

This is Melita Hofmann’s drawing of a Woman’s Shoe, made at some point in the 20th century with coloured pencil. It has a kind of tender precision. I’m really drawn to the texture created by the coloured pencil marks, all those tiny parallel lines building up the form. And look at the colour! The blending of rose and violet hues gives it an almost bruised, fragile quality. I wonder if she was thinking about vulnerability? The shoe itself looks more like a slipper, and the colour feels delicate, like skin. The parallel stitches and the simple rendering of the sole give a sense of care. Maybe this drawing was a meditation on domesticity, on the small, everyday objects that shape our lives. In this way, Hofmann is in conversation with other artists who find profundity in the mundane, transforming the ordinary into something extraordinary. It's like she's saying, even the simplest object, like a woman’s shoe, can be a site of beauty, inquiry, and imagination.