Untitled 1943

Kukryniksy made this untitled black-and-white print. It seems the image came into being through cross hatching, a pretty intense method of using closely spaced parallel lines to create shading and depth. I’m imagining the artist leaning over this thing for hours, hatching away to create texture, value, and form. What’s amazing here is that they've reduced the world to these simple marks, and yet it’s so descriptive and critical. The black and white lets us focus on form and feeling instead of getting distracted by color, and that's powerful. I can see a particular line defining the shape and also communicating a sense of gravity, of weight and sadness. The artist may have looked at painters such as Kollwitz and Grosz who were also politically engaged. Artists are always talking to one another, even across time. This piece is the artist speaking their mind, sharing their feelings, and inviting us to think along with them. And, through this graphic rendering, they are in an ongoing conversation with all of us, across time.