Figürliche Szenen 1920

This drawing by Adolf Hölzel of Figürliche Szenen is made with a lovely soft, smudgy charcoal, and you can almost feel the artist's hand moving across the paper. It’s got that wonderful sense of being in process. The texture here is all about the grain of the paper, and how the charcoal catches on it, creating a range of soft grey tones. Look at the way Hölzel uses broad strokes to define the background, almost dissolving the figures into their surroundings. And then notice how he digs in to create those sharp, angular lines that define the figures robes - they're so decisive and economical. Those lines have a real physicality; you can imagine the pressure he applied, the speed of the gesture. There’s a raw, searching quality to this drawing, that reminds me of Paula Modersohn-Becker, another artist grappling with form and expression. It makes me think about art as a conversation, an ongoing exploration, where meaning is never fixed.