Tired Woman, Sonia Gramatté (Müder Mädchenkopf, Sonia Gramatté) 1923

Here's a tired woman, Sonia Gramatté, made by Walter Gramatté, and just look at those lines! I can imagine the artist, Walter, coaxing those lines into being, scratching them out, and then layering that intense teal background. Sonia seems weary, doesn’t she? That one red eye stares right through you, like she’s seen too much. And those marks around her neck - are they feathers, fur, or just the weight of the world? It’s like Walter is asking us, the viewers, to finish the story. To fill in the blanks of Sonia's life, her weariness. I think of other printmakers and painters— Käthe Kollwitz, Paula Modersohn-Becker— all wrestling with the same human stuff: sorrow, fatigue, the quiet struggle of being. We artists are all in conversation, you know, across time and space. Passing on the torch of feeling, one line, one brushstroke at a time.