Portret van een man 1933

Kornél Révész's small portrait of a man is an etching—a printed image—of fine, delicate lines. I wonder how he made it. I imagine Révész hunched over a metal plate, carefully drawing into its waxy surface with a sharp needle. A mistake here, a slip there, and you’d have to start all over! A real labor of love. And then, the acid bath, the inking, and finally the revealing moment when the paper is peeled back to show the finished image. The etched lines form a thoughtful man in wire-rimmed glasses. What’s he thinking about, I wonder? He seems gentle but intelligent. The lines in his face, the tiny hatch marks, create shading and volume—a face emerging from the flat surface. These little prints are like whispers across time—little conversations. I think of other artists, like Lucian Freud, who also dug into the portrait, trying to capture not just likeness but something deeper. Artists riff off each other, you know, keeping the conversation going.