Untitled (Mexican Village, with donkey in foreground) 1934

This untitled gouache painting of a Mexican village, with donkey in the foreground, was painted by Konrad Cramer. The way Cramer handles the gouache has this beautiful, matte quality. It’s almost like fresco, with thin layers of color laid on top of one another. Look at how he describes the leaves of the trees with these loose, almost scribbled marks, a kind of visual shorthand, that’s so playful. You can almost feel him enjoying the act of painting! And that sky! Horizontal strokes of baby blue, with clouds rendered as simple, flat shapes. There’s a real joy in the way he describes the light and atmosphere of this place. You see echoes of Marsden Hartley in the flattening of forms and the use of simplified shapes, that same desire to capture the spirit of a place through color and gesture. It reminds us that art is always a conversation, a back and forth between artists across time.