Love 1910

Raoul Dufy made this woodcut called ‘Love’ and, of course, it’s all about mark making. The whole image is constructed from black lines on a white ground, or vice versa depending on how you look at it. It is like a drawing, or even writing. Looking closely, the surface feels alive; it’s like a little world made out of cuts and gouges. Notice that the white marks aren’t all uniform. Some are wide, some are thin, some are long, some are short. What I love about printmaking is that it’s all about process. You can see the artist's hand in every mark, a record of each decision they made along the way. Dufy was known for his decorative and vibrant paintings, often depicting scenes of leisure and pleasure. This woodcut shares that joyful sensibility but distills it into its most essential form. Like Matisse, or even Gauguin, Dufy invites us to consider art as a space of experimentation, where ambiguity and imagination triumph over rigid certainties.