Vajda Lajos Zenei Ütemek 1939 1939

Vajda Lajos made this drawing, Zenei Ütemek – that’s ‘Musical Beats’ in English - in 1939, using ink or graphite on paper, and its jagged shapes speak of a world on edge, don’t they? The texture is rough, you can see the tooth of the paper coming through, giving it a kind of raw immediacy. The marks vary from delicate lines to denser, almost aggressive strokes, filled in with hatching and cross-hatching. Look at the upper left; there's a kind of frenzy of lines there. It makes me think of twigs or the skeleton of a leaf. This is mirrored by a long horizontal shape that looks like a thorned branch stretching across the image. The stark contrast reminds me of the woodcuts of German Expressionists like Kirchner or Heckel. There's that same feeling of anxiety, of a world teetering on the brink. It’s like Vajda is using the simplest of means to convey something about the inner turmoil of a world hurtling towards war.