Garden of Bagatelle (Best Wishes for 1969 from La Galerie Sagot-Le Garrec) 1954 - 1968

Andre Dunoyer de Segonzac made this etching, ‘Garden of Bagatelle,’ as a New Year’s greeting. It’s all delicate scribbles and quick flicks of line, isn’t it? Like a garden overgrown, rendered with the kind of breathless energy that tells you the artist was right there, caught up in the moment of seeing. Look at how the lines pile up, one on top of the other, suggesting depth without ever quite resolving into solid forms. The pots, the plants, even the building behind – everything is made up of this frenetic, almost nervous energy. I love the way he’s used the white of the paper to suggest light filtering through the leaves, creating this sense of shimmering, verdant chaos. There’s a similar feeling in some of Picasso’s etchings, that sense of line as a kind of living, breathing thing, capturing not just the look of a place, but its whole atmosphere. It’s a reminder that art isn't about perfection, but about capturing the fleeting, messy beauty of the world as we experience it. It’s about saying yes to the wildness, the ambiguity, the sheer, overwhelming abundance of it all.