Reason 1941

Ruth Lewin made this etching, Reason, sometime before 1975. It’s a powerful piece; Lewin has used the starkness of black ink on white paper to create something that feels both deeply personal and universally resonant. Look at the way she’s built up the image with these tiny, delicate lines. It’s almost like she’s whispering the story onto the page. You can see this cross-hatching effect most clearly in the lower half of the image, where the lines create a dense, shadowy space around the figure of a child. The texture here feels almost palpable, a kind of visual weight that anchors the piece. And then your eye travels up to the top of the frame, where the lines are looser, more gestural, creating a sense of air and space, or perhaps a gathering storm. It reminds me a little of Kathe Kollwitz, another artist who knew how to use the power of black and white to speak volumes about suffering and resilience. Art like this isn’t about easy answers, it’s about holding space for difficult questions.