Two Dancers 2014

Gazmend Freitag made this drawing, Two Dancers, in 2014, and what I find so captivating is the way he coaxes these figures out of a warm, earthy ground. The marks here are immediate, searching—you can almost feel the artist’s hand moving across the surface. The dancer in the foreground is rendered with soft white and red chalk that gives her a ghostly presence, while the dancer behind her is only sketched in outline. Look at how the touches of red around the headscarf and waist pull your eye around the form, anchoring the figure against the brown paper. There’s a directness here that reminds me of Degas’ pastels, that same interest in capturing fleeting movement and light. But where Degas is all about precision, Freitag embraces a certain rawness. It’s this tension between control and abandon that makes the drawing so alive. It feels like the beginning of something, an invitation to imagine the dance unfolding beyond the frame.