August Strindberg 1915

Gosta Adrian-Nilsson painted this portrait of August Strindberg, probably in oil, and it's all about the push and pull of color and form. The marks are angular, like facets of a gem, and the skin tone is a sickly green-yellow. The texture is pretty smooth, but you can see the brushstrokes, especially in the way the hair is rendered, with these wild, spiky flicks. Check out the mouth! It's like a weird little flower, all sharp and kind of menacing. That mouth really sticks out, doesn't it? It's a focal point that sort of throws the whole face off balance. Adrian-Nilsson was part of a generation of artists who were really grappling with how to represent the inner life on canvas. Think about other expressionist portraits, like those by Kirchner or Heckel, where the face becomes a landscape of feeling, distorted and raw. In the end, all art is a big conversation between artists, across time and space.