Staande vrouw, op de rug gezien c. 1930 - 1934

Curator: Well, look at this wispy vision! What strikes me immediately is the feeling of fleeting movement, of a moment captured, yet slipping away… Editor: Indeed. Here we have “Staande vrouw, op de rug gezien” – “Standing Woman, Seen from the Back”– a pencil drawing by Isaac Israels, likely from between 1930 and 1934. There's a casual, almost off-hand quality. Curator: Precisely. It feels so immediate, like a glimpse, an observation jotted down quickly on a café napkin. She's almost swallowed by the sketchy strokes that form the background, or maybe she's emerging from it. What is she thinking? Editor: That informality hints at Israels' larger body of work, wherein we see him interested in depictions of modern life as it unfolded. The figure’s anonymity seems telling, emphasizing her existence as a signifier in a modern space rather than an individualized portrait. This idea fits right in line with Georg Simmel's thinking about the modern metropolis. Curator: Ooh, the big city! But despite this potential erasure of self, the composition pulls me in. All those diagonals seem to lead towards her… Or away? The negative space around her form becomes so powerful... she dissolves as much as she appears. I wonder who she was, what she felt, even knowing it's none of my business! Editor: That tension between visibility and invisibility, individual and collective, it's there in the subject matter but is really expressed so elegantly, in the swiftness and transience of the medium and style. There's an intersectional commentary to be made here too—whose visibility matters? Who is overlooked, dismissed? And what power dynamics come into play when depicting figures from this angle? It all speaks to a wider historical interest in how the spectacle of the crowd and urban anonymity were unfolding as social experiences. Curator: It gives you that slight vertigo when you reflect on a painting from years and years ago while thinking on where our culture finds itself now… Art is a way to stretch through time. Editor: Exactly. Israels gives us an echo that speaks across decades. And invites us to listen critically to the silences too.