The Horse Tryout 1951

Andre Masson made this drawing, ‘The Horse Tryout’, with ink and crayon, and you can feel him thinking through the image as he’s making it, a dance of mind, hand, and material. I imagine Masson in his studio, the crayon moving swiftly, intuitively across the paper. Look at these gestural marks; they capture the raw energy and movement of the horse, don’t they? The minimal colour palette—mostly blacks, greys, with touches of red and blue—adds to the immediacy. You can feel the urgency in the application, almost like a sketch but with the weight of something more profound. It reminds me of other expressionistic painters trying to capture a feeling, a primal scream of an image. What was he thinking as he made it? Was he trying to capture the animal’s essence, or maybe his own? I think artists are in an ongoing conversation with one another, each adding their voice to the mix, trying to figure out the world, one brushstroke at a time.