Untitled (Abstraction: Bather) 1937

This untitled linocut by Carl Robert Holty uses dense blacks and pure whites in a dynamic pattern. It looks to me like a bather at the edge of the sea. The shapes are blocky, almost architectural, but they suggest a body in motion, a body being broken apart and reassembled. I love how the black ink isn’t perfect, the edges slightly crumbly, giving it a tactile quality. The surface almost looks like it could be velvet. Notice how the waves are rendered as simple zigzags, a shorthand that works perfectly. The bather is abstracted into geometric forms, like a cubist sculpture, but the feeling is still there, that human presence. Holty’s work often explores the intersection of abstraction and figuration, and you might see the influence of artists like Picasso or Braque here. But he brings his own unique sensibility to it, a kind of playful seriousness. It’s a reminder that art isn’t about answers, it’s about asking interesting questions.