Drawing for ‘Children’s Swimming Pool’ 1971

Curator: This is Leon Kossoff's "Drawing for 'Children's Swimming Pool'", a piece whose exact date is unknown, currently held in the Tate Collections. Editor: It feels immediate, almost frantic. The frenetic lines capture movement, but also a sense of transience. Is it charcoal? Curator: Yes, charcoal on paper. The rawness of the material serves to highlight the social context, doesn't it? Pools as public spaces, bodies in motion, a democratic scene. Editor: Exactly. And the layering, the visible process – it's not just observation, it’s about the labor of seeing, the act of representing lived experience. Curator: And the way he focuses on the bodies—the way Kossoff treats them, almost abstracting them, while still acknowledging their presence in this shared, public space. It challenges notions of idealised form. Editor: It certainly resists any romantic idealisation. It's about the physical reality, the very ordinary act of swimming, rendered with urgency. Curator: It makes you think about public space and who occupies it. Editor: Definitely leaves me considering the labor enacted in creating this piece, and the labor depicted.