Spring 1973

Ilka Gedo's "Spring" unfolds with a pastel-chalky dreaminess. Imagine her, in her studio, perhaps with muted light, layering and hatching these quiet strokes. Gedo's painting feels like a personal myth—two figures stand in a sparse landscape beneath a pale blue sky, rendered in horizontal striations. A lone sun and a scattering of birds are playful notations. There’s a kind of tenderness in her naive figures and motifs. I am particularly drawn to the rough texture and how it shapes our experience of the painting. Gedo's mark-making communicates so much feeling, her intentions so clear. I see echoes of Paul Klee in the way she simplifies forms and organizes the composition into distinct zones. It reminds us that artists are in an ongoing conversation, borrowing and riffing off of one another’s ideas. It's like she’s sharing her own secret garden with us, a space of imagination.