Gral c. 4/Holy Grail No. 4 1965

Pavel Nesleha made this print, Gral c. 4 / Holy Grail No. 4, with lithography. What a mix of textures! I’m thinking about Nesleha in the studio, building up this image piece by piece. There’s a central shape, kind of like a portal, with these rough, almost architectural forms stacked above and below. Imagine the artist layering ink, scraping away, maybe even tearing the paper to get these jagged edges. I see a connection with artists like Antoni Tàpies, who also explored texture and materiality. The drips and scratches are like a map of Nesleha's process, each mark a decision, an accident, a correction. It's all about the push and pull, the back-and-forth between intention and chance. But Nesleha is also in dialogue with a longer history of printmaking, all those artists who wrestled with the same materials. We’re all just riffing off each other, trying to make sense of the world one mark at a time.