Well Sweep (Watering at the Well Sweep) 1927

Vilmos Aba-Novak created "Well Sweep" using paint and canvas, but it feels like he's working with light itself, doesn't it? I see rapid brushstrokes, a flurry of blues, pinks and yellows swirling around a central structure. I imagine Aba-Novak approaching the canvas with a kind of urgency, each stroke building upon the last, a dance between intention and accident. What’s amazing is the tenderness and speed. I feel like I can sense what he was thinking: how to capture the essence of a rural scene, the way sunlight filters through the air, the feeling of the air on the farm. The way the pump meets the sky. It seems like the painting is pushing itself, the artist just letting it happen. That cross-like shape in the middle -- does it remind you of Malevich too? It's an artist working with the history of painting in his mind, while trying to find something else in front of him. And that's what painters do, they bring their own lives to what they know about the world.