Sarika II (Original Title) 1922

Max Beckmann made this drawing, Sarika II, with pencil, we think, sometime in the first half of the twentieth century. It's a portrait, or rather, a sketch, a quick and dirty likeness of a woman, maybe a friend or an acquaintance. It’s so casual that you can feel his hand moving across the paper. Look how Beckmann defines the form with line: thin hatching and denser cross-hatching suggesting the volumes of the face and body. See the way the lines around the eyes and mouth are reinforced, giving a sense of depth, but also character, maybe even a touch of cynicism. And those hands – slightly clumsy, very human. Beckmann was always pushing and pulling at the boundaries of representation. You can see echoes of his influence in later artists like Francis Bacon, who also used distortion and exaggeration to convey raw emotion. It feels like an ongoing conversation, you know?