Rush (Ruée) from the portfolio Pencil on Shell 1971

Curator: Pierre Alechinsky's "Rush (Ruée) from the portfolio Pencil on Shell," created in 1971, is a dynamic example of abstract expressionism, rendered here as a graphic print using the linocut technique. Editor: My first thought is…chaos! Exuberant, joyful chaos. A beautiful jumble of lines and forms—like witnessing a swarm of bees building their hive or something equally mad and vital. Curator: The power in this "Rush" comes through the layering of forms, doesn’t it? The artist orchestrates depth via varying lineweights, while color operates on the level of creating planes. Observe how the cobalt block at the top reads as receding through its tonal contrast with the sienna swirl dominating the middle ground. Editor: Right, it's a dance between order and freedom. The dark upper register feels like a storm, doesn’t it? Then, the yellow and black scribble in the center, teeming with, well, *rush,* feels almost biomorphic—hints of animals, maybe distorted faces peering through. Curator: Precisely. While ostensibly abstract, figurations haunt the composition, encouraging what we might consider a kind of archetypal reading, with the color relations activating emotional dimensions within the thematic tension of “rush”. The green and violet in the bottom corners seem deliberately designed to unbalance that field, while also inviting visual closure. Editor: And isn’t that what makes it so compelling? That push and pull. I find the rawness and immediacy of the printmaking itself particularly evocative. The starkness—it’s like peering into Alechinsky's subconscious, a raw, unedited glimpse into a very fertile creative mind. There's almost something playful about how such raw, explosive energies co-exist on a relatively contained picture plane. Curator: Yes, "contained explosion" captures the paradoxical brilliance nicely, an apt encapsulation of the linocut aesthetic here. It is precisely in this formal rigor and material sensitivity that Alechinsky strikes such a poignant tension between frenzy and form. Editor: This print certainly reminds you that great art doesn't always need to be about perfectly polished surfaces, but, you know, feeling that frenetic energy can itself be the point.