Self-Portrait c. 1920

This sheet, of about 44 by 54 centimeters, features a self-portrait by Antonio Mancini. Look at how he's built these two heads from thick, almost sculptural strokes of brown, black, and white paint. It’s like he's wrestling with his own image, trying to pin it down. The paint is applied so directly, so viscerally, that you can almost feel the artist's hand moving across the surface. Notice the dark, swirling marks around the faces, they feel almost like shadows or perhaps even a cage. And then there's that splash of yellow ochre right under the nose of the figure on the left. It's a tiny detail, but it brings the whole face to life. Mancini reminds me of someone like Francis Bacon, not necessarily in style, but in the way he fearlessly confronts the raw, messy reality of existence. Art, after all, is an ongoing conversation, an endless exploration of what it means to be human.