Without Home 1941

Cyprián Majerník made this expressive watercolour, Without Home, with a loaded brush and muted tones. It looks like he was working quickly, and the feeling is melancholic. I think the speedy application of the paint is really important for getting that feeling across. Majerník has thinned the watercolour to an inky consistency, and the washes bleed into each other, merging the figures of man and beast. There's a kind of tonal harmony in the predominance of ochre, brown, and green, but the way he's used these colours also creates a sense of bleakness and uncertainty. See the way the man standing on the right dissolves into the background? It's as if he's losing himself. Majerník was a contemporary of the German Expressionists, and you can see some of that influence here in the rawness and intensity of feeling. Like them, Majerník wasn't afraid to use art as a way of wrestling with the big questions of life and death.