Irene Altman 1921 - 1922

Otto Mueller made this drawing, Irene Altman, with crayon, and you can see the marks of the crayon everywhere. There’s something direct and process-oriented about a drawing, isn’t there? I love how he’s used a dark crayon to define her features and to build shadows around her face, creating a sense of depth and volume. The smudgy, broken lines of the crayon give the piece a soft, almost dreamy quality. Look at the way he's rendered the area around her eyes; it's a flurry of marks, yet it captures her gaze so intensely. Mueller was part of Die Brücke, a group of German Expressionist artists, and like his peers, he was interested in simplifying form. But he was also interested in conveying an emotional intensity through his work, which makes me think of artists like Kirchner or Heckel. There’s a real conversation going on here about the power of suggestion in art.