Man and Woman 1926

Janos Mattis-Teutsch created this painting, Man and Woman, with what looks like thin layers of color. I wonder if he mixed his own pink, the colour of the base of this striking central form. There is a beautiful white figure made of many layers of layered paint; it's geometric, almost like a collaged sculpture. How did he build up these forms? What was he thinking? It's like he's carving out an idea, a thought. Maybe he began with those shadowy figures in the background, as if seeing the painting emerge through a mist or fog. This reminds me of other figurative paintings of the period which attempted to represent universal types by stripping them of their individual characteristics. We stand on the shoulders of so many other painters, trying things out and failing a lot of the time. And this willingness to experiment makes painting, like life, always surprising, always unresolved.