Study of Women 1920

Ossip Zadkine made this gouache on paper, called 'Study of Women', with broad strokes of color that seem almost hewn from the page. It’s like he’s wrestling with the image, not just rendering it. The materiality here is upfront: you can see the watery edges of the gouache, the way the pigments separate and bleed. It’s not about hiding the process, but embracing it. Look at that bold, dark line that defines the central figure’s back – it’s so decisive, so sure, but also kind of wobbly. That wobble is where the life is, where you see Zadkine grappling with form, not just copying it. This reminds me a bit of some early Picassos, those figures broken down into planes and angles. But Zadkine’s got a different energy. He’s less about intellectual dissection and more about visceral connection, about feeling the weight and presence of these bodies in space. And it’s that feeling, that tension between control and chaos, that keeps me coming back.