Staten Island 1934

Theodore Roszak made this print called 'Staten Island' with ink on paper. The salmon colour peeking out behind the marks looks like the underpainting on a canvas. I love how Roszak arranges these geometric forms with such care. It reminds me of Russian Constructivism and the Bauhaus, but it's also very much its own thing. I can imagine him in his studio, shuffling shapes, trying them out in different positions, working and reworking the composition until it all locks into place. He’s really thinking about surface, depth, and space. There’s a tension between flatness and depth. The shapes create a kind of architecture, but it’s architecture that exists only in the imagination. It’s almost as if the artist is dreaming up a new way of seeing, and inviting us to dream along with him. This makes me think of other artists and the ongoing conversation that painters have with one another across time.