Bouquet Holder 1935 - 1942

Samuel O. Klein made this drawing of a bouquet holder on paper, but we don’t know when. What I love about this piece is the mark-making, that really intricate stippling and hatching he uses to describe the form. You can see the time and the care that he took here. It's not just about rendering the object realistically; it's about Klein’s deep engagement with the process. Look at the way he builds up the tones, almost like he's sculpting the form with his pencil. It’s so precise, yet there’s a softness too. The choice to work in graphite gives the whole composition a dreamlike quality. This reminds me of the work of Vija Celmins, who also used graphite to create these hyper-realistic, almost ghostly images of everyday objects. What both of these artists show us is that there's something deeply poetic in the act of close observation and that art is a conversation across time and space.