Abstracte compositie 1920

This lithograph, an 'Abstracte compositie' by Erich Wichmann, feels like a private, quiet moment. It’s a world of layered, smudgy greys, built up stroke by stroke. I can almost feel Wichmann’s hand moving across the stone, coaxing form out of nothing. What was he thinking? Maybe he wasn’t thinking at all, maybe he was just feeling the way the crayon met the surface, surrendering to the process, the image emerging slowly through trial and error. See how the marks compress and release, gather and dissipate; the artist has worked the surface to such a degree that it’s hard to tell what’s beneath. It’s an image in the process of becoming and undoing itself all at once. It reminds me of a kind of abstract, figurative tradition that other artists like Rodin were exploring at the time, where the body is less a solid form and more a collection of gestures, caught in mid-motion. It’s a reminder that artists are constantly riffing off of one another, building on each other’s ideas across time.