Near Lugano 1982

Martyl Langsdorf’s ‘Near Lugano’ is a landscape built with strokes of brown, beige, and grey gouache. I can imagine her outdoors, squinting, trying to capture the scene. The surface is alive with her marks. See how she’s layering thin, washy strokes? They build up these atmospheric fields of color – but then, BAM, she interrupts them with sharp, directional lines. A dark zigzag describes the terrain, turning it into pattern. What does it mean to abstract a landscape so much that it becomes more about the act of seeing, than about what is being seen? The artist's bold, simplified forms remind me of Milton Avery. But it's also completely its own thing. It's a conversation that happens across generations; we build on each other’s work.