The Battle 1964

Frank Wright made this print, ‘The Battle,’ with aquatint and etching on paper. Imagine him hunched over the plate, lost in the swarm of his own making. It's all swarming shapes and inky blues, the kind that could leave you a bit disoriented. I see it as Wright trying to figure out how to depict chaos and conflict, using the language available to him through printmaking. It looks to me that it’s less about historical accuracy and more about conjuring up a feeling, a sense of the moment. The dark and light creates an emotional landscape of turmoil. Think about Goya’s ‘Disasters of War,’ or some of those wild battle scenes by Delacroix, where it feels like everything is coming apart at the seams. I think Wright, like many artists, is in a conversation with the past, wrestling with how to express something timeless about the human condition. Each artist leaves us a unique lens through which we see and understand the world a little differently.