Study for the Lithograph Refugees 1944

In this artwork, Cyprián Majerník captured a haunting scene using washes of muted brown, grey, and white, almost as if the colors themselves are weary. You can almost feel the artist's hand moving across the paper, sketching with charcoal and thin layers of watercolor, trying to pin down this transient moment. I wonder what it was like for him, witnessing such displacement and trying to translate that experience onto paper. The weight of the sky bears down on the refugees, and you get the sense of a landscape that mirrors their emotional state. Look at how the bodies are rendered; they are elongated and almost ghost-like, fading into the background, while the horse is much more sharply defined. The artist may have wanted to show the impact displacement has on the mental state, making people lose their substance while animals are firmly rooted in the real. It reminds me of Käthe Kollwitz, who also captured a sense of humanity on the brink. We feel the pulse of human history here, a reminder of our shared vulnerabilities, echoing through time.