Woman Seated in a Cottage 1926

Solomon Borisovich Judovin made this wood engraving of a woman seated in a cottage. The textures are amazing and it must have taken him so long! I imagine him working on the block – cutting away at the wood, and trying to imagine what it would look like once printed. When you reduce the world to black and white, you really have to think about the way that light and shadow work together. It’s kind of wild how he's captured that heavy drape of cloth, and the folds of the woman's dress! I wonder if he knew her, and how long it took him to get the drawing right? I wonder if she fidgeted! You can really see how Judovin was interested in the way that the eye pieces together a whole scene from small details, a bit like the Cubists were doing in painting. You see this in German Expressionist prints too. Artists have been in conversation with one another across time, always thinking about new ways of seeing.