Houses on the Outskirts of Bucharest 1930

Iosif Iser built up this townscape with small strokes of muted colours. Imagine him, standing at the edge of Bucharest, squinting in the sunlight, trying to capture the scene before him. The paint is applied in short, choppy strokes, like he’s dabbing at the canvas with his brush. I sympathize with the artist, trying to capture the feeling of a place, the way the light hits the buildings, the colours of the trees. There’s something about the way he’s captured the rooftops, a kind of shorthand for “house” that’s really appealing. The surface has a tactile quality; the individual brushstrokes create a mosaic of texture and colour. You can almost feel the sun beating down, smell the dust in the air. He would have been looking, thinking, and feeling this place, a conversation across time as he follows in the footsteps of other painters before him, each of them trying to capture the world in their own way.