India 1916

Zinaida Serebriakova made this drawing, India, with sanguine, that lovely red chalk, and you can just feel her hand moving across the paper, searching for the form, line by line. I can imagine Serebriakova in the studio, grappling with how to represent this figure, a nude woman in a state of repose. Her lines are confident, but also tentative, as if she is feeling her way through the subject, almost as if she is modelling her way through the pose. She starts with a basic armature, and then she builds the weight and the planes of the figure. She is trying to find a solid shape that will ground the image in the space of the paper. There's a sense of immediacy here, a feeling that we're witnessing the artist's thought process, her struggle to capture the essence of her subject. And through that struggle, something beautiful emerges, a testament to the power of looking, drawing, and trying. It reminds us that art is a conversation, a back-and-forth between artists across time, each building upon the discoveries of those who came before.