Woman’s head 1930 - 1931

Mikuláš Galanda made this watercolour, Woman’s Head, with flat cool tones, and it feels very modern. I love how controlled it is! How the watery paint falls neatly within each outlined form, the way the grey of the sculpture echoes in the grey of the surface below. Was he thinking about analytic cubism? Probably. I can imagine Galanda, who died young, carefully composing this painting, outlining in pencil first, maybe? I feel a bit sad for the artist, knowing his life was cut short. But I feel like he knew what he was doing; he was in control, even if he didn’t know what the future held. The folds of the yellow curtain in the background also appear in other paintings by Galanda. Isn’t it amazing how artists have these obsessions, these visual refrains which appear again and again? It’s like they are in conversation with themselves, working through something, each time.