Shoe 1935 - 1942

Melita Hofmann made this little drawing of a shoe with graphite. There’s a wonderful contrast here. A tension between the roughly shaded, earthy tones of the shoe itself, and those delicate floral arabesques gracing the side. I can imagine her, pressing hard with the side of the pencil to build up the volume of the shoe. She then uses a sharpened point to apply the decorative flourishes. It makes me think of Gustav Klimt, another Viennese artist. Like Klimt she elevates a mundane object through decoration. In both cases, what is functional becomes ornamental. Maybe she saw her shoes not just as protection for her feet but as surfaces to be embellished, fantasized, and activated with imagination. I wonder what her shoes looked like in real life, and whether she drew on them too!