Begegnung nach Jahren 1936 - 1938

This image shows a print made by Imre Reiner. It's got these sepia tones and lots of sketchy cross-hatching marks. I imagine Reiner making the plate, dragging a tool across it, watching the image slowly emerge, bit by bit. I'm thinking about the moment he's captured here – the awkwardness of that encounter! The slightly rigid figures, set against a blurry background. Maybe he's thinking about his own life, the people we lose touch with, and the strange experience of meeting them again after time passes. I wonder, was this anyone he knew? Did he see this happen once? There's a kind of longing, or maybe melancholy, in this image. You can see how the texture and the lines create this feeling. He's not trying to give us a perfect picture of what happened, but something more like a feeling. Painters like Reiner show us how art is like having a conversation, with themselves and with us.