Machines at the Ganz factory, from Folder 57 1947

Ilka Gedo made this pastel drawing called 'Machines at the Ganz Factory', in warm reds and browns. I can imagine her smudging the colors with her fingers, layer upon layer to create a kind of warm haze. The factory setting feels claustrophobic, but the orange glow gives it a strangely intimate feel. I can feel the artist’s struggle to capture what she sees, building up the image bit by bit. There are figures in the background - are they workers? The objects in the foreground look like industrial tools, or maybe pots of tea. See how she uses the red to unite the whole composition, a unifying gesture that speaks to the rhythms of labor, life, and the mundane. It makes me think of other factory paintings by Paula Modersohn-Becker, in which the ordinary becomes monumental through colour and shape. Artists are always answering each other, in a way, and Gedo’s drawing feels like an embodied response to the world around her, full of both immediacy and mystery.