Figural Sketch 1935 - 1944

Arnold Peter Weisz-Kubínčan made this Figural Sketch using pastel. It's light, airy, a few quick strokes suggesting forms rather than defining them. It's like catching a glimpse of a memory. Look at the texture! The pastel is dry and chalky, sitting right on the surface, a build up of small marks which suggest the figures and the landscape. The peach-colored ground is almost like skin, and the marks feel like a fleeting touch. See how the seated figure is rendered, just a few lines and smudges, but somehow it conveys a sense of weight and presence? The yellow shape he holds in his hands is the only area of high saturation, drawing our eye and suggesting a moment of contemplation, perhaps. This piece reminds me of Bonnard's intimate, domestic scenes, but with a rawer edge. Both artists, though, seem interested in capturing the fleeting, ephemeral moments of everyday life, and in suggesting that the beauty lies in the incomplete, the unresolved.