The Garden II 1964

Constantin Flondor made "The Garden II" with what looks like a ballpoint pen, and it’s all about the energy of the line. Imagine him, maybe outside, maybe just from memory, letting the pen wander across the page. There’s a real sense of discovery here, of feeling out the space rather than dictating it. The lines are searching, like they're trying to find the edges of something that's not quite there, a ghost of a garden. And the ink, it's so immediate, so raw. I bet he didn’t want to cover up the page too much, but instead wanted to leave room for the viewer to imagine the rest. The squiggles, the loops, the sharp angles – they all speak to a kind of frenetic energy, a desire to capture the fleeting beauty of nature. It reminds me of Cy Twombly in its rawness, but with its own kind of quiet intensity. Artists are always building on each other, finding new ways to express what it means to be human.