Untitled (Abstraction) 1948

John Hultberg made this untitled abstraction with crayon or charcoal on paper, and it's like a stage set, a drama caught in monochrome. I can almost feel the artist’s hand moving across the paper, coaxing shapes from the darkness, smudging and layering to build this enigmatic space. Look at those stark white forms—are they pillars, figures, or just pure, floating geometry? It's all so ambiguous. The texture feels almost bruised, doesn't it? There's an urgency in the marks, a sense of searching and questioning. It reminds me of Goya’s dark, brooding prints—that same feeling of unease and the unknown. Hultberg plays with light and shadow, and sets up a rhythm of tension and release. Each mark is a little decision, a tiny act of will, that somehow accumulates into a complex, unified vision. Painting is a way of thinking aloud, and he invites us into his thought process.