Nude 1932

Zinaida Serebriakova made this nude, in Paris in 1932, using charcoal. It looks so fresh! I can almost feel Serebriakova making the image. She’s drawing and rubbing out, smudging, and then precisely defining the contours of the body. She’s feeling her way around the shapes, understanding the volumes. She is working over and over to arrive at this final image. The blues in the pillow have these amazing scribbled marks around the edges. I can feel the energy of the artist in that gesture. I wonder if she was also thinking of other artists like Modigliani, who was also living and working in Paris at the time. He was exploring similar themes of the human body and using it to communicate feeling, intention, and meaning. Artists are in an ongoing conversation and exchange of ideas across time, inspiring one another’s creativity. Painting is an embodied expression which embraces ambiguity and uncertainty, allowing for multiple interpretations and meaning over fixed or definitive readings.