Ællingen maatte svømme... 1928

Fritz Syberg made this drawing, Ællingen maatte svømme..., with pen and ink, and you can really feel his hand moving across the page. The marks are so immediate, like a snapshot of a thought. There's this amazing contrast between the sky, which is all these frantic, diagonal lines, and the stillness of the land. Look at how he renders the water, this dense, scribbled mass. It's almost violent, yet it suggests this quiet, reflective surface. And then those delicate, spindly trees, like they're reaching out, grasping at the air. It reminds me of Cy Twombly, in a way – that same sense of raw, unfiltered expression. Syberg's not trying to create a perfect picture. It's more like he's wrestling with the scene, trying to capture its essence in these simple, but powerful, marks. And it’s that struggle, that messy process, that makes it so compelling.