Female nude, reclining 1930

Richard Martin Werner made this drawing of a reclining nude in 1930. It’s just pencil on paper. I love the immediacy of drawings like this, how they let you see the artist thinking. There's something so intimate and vulnerable about the gesture of the woman’s body and how Werner has captured it. He uses these simple, searching lines that feel exploratory. Look how he defines the curve of her hip and thigh with a few strokes, or the gentle shading that suggests the roundness of her form. There’s no attempt to hide the process; you can see where the pencil has been, the slight corrections and adjustments that Werner made as he worked. It's interesting to me how this compares to a drawing by someone like Matisse, where the line has this incredible confidence and fluidity. Werner's drawing feels more tentative, more human, almost like he is caressing the paper. It reminds us that art is really a conversation.