Naakte zittende vrouw 1884 - 1952

This is a brown ink print of a seated nude woman by Reinier Willem Petrus de Vries. Immediately I think about the process. It looks like the artist has cut out a block and then pressed it onto the paper. There’s a kind of chunky roughness that comes with that, a real sense of the material. The ink isn't smooth, it's got a grainy texture. Look at the background, you can see how the ink hasn’t covered the paper evenly. Then there’s the lines on the woman's body. They are simple and a bit wobbly. They have a real handmade quality, like the artist wasn’t trying to be perfect. Looking at this, I am reminded of Paula Modersohn-Becker. Both artists share a kind of raw honesty in their depictions of the human form. It's not about ideal beauty, it's about capturing something real. Ultimately, art is about this ongoing conversation, isn’t it? It's about artists responding to each other, building on what came before, and finding their own way to say something new.