Passion 1940

Arnold Peter Weisz-Kubínčan made this energetic scene of the hunt with dark ink, maybe on paper, and he called it Passion. I imagine him, hunched over the page, quickly laying down these stark, black strokes. Look how these lines become dogs, a hunter, and the landscape all at once! It’s almost frantic, the pace of it, as if he’s trying to capture a fleeting moment, or feeling. The ink pools and bleeds, giving weight to the figures, especially the dogs. You can almost feel their muscular bodies, their animal drive. Then, the lines become lighter, sketchier, suggesting the background, trees, birds taking flight – an environment, but also a feeling of being caught up in the moment. It makes me think of other artists who use ink for its immediacy, like a visual diary. Passion feels like a raw, unfiltered expression, a snapshot of a hunt, but also of a state of mind, the artist’s own passion poured onto the page.