Running woman 1912

Tadeusz Makowski made this painting of a running woman using oil paint and a restricted palette that feels very earthy, almost monochromatic. It's all about process here, the way the painting is built up with small, deliberate marks. Look at how the paint is applied, thick in some areas, thin and transparent in others, which gives the painting a lovely textural quality. You can almost feel the artist's hand moving across the canvas, building up the figure and the ground around her with individual dabs and strokes. Notice the way the black lines define the shapes, sort of Cubist, sort of Fauvist, but all Makowski. The ground feels like a mosaic, like broken tiles. It reminds me of the way Cézanne constructed his landscapes, breaking them down into smaller planes, but with a folksy, almost naive quality. This piece might remind you of early Picasso, or maybe even some of the German Expressionists. The beauty of art is that it's always in conversation with itself.