Female Image. From the series 'Search for Pushkin's Female Images' 1970

This piece, from Hryhorii Havrylenko’s series ‘Search for Pushkin’s Female Images’ looks like it was made with simple ink on paper. You can see the artist’s hand as he searches for a likeness, a way of representing his subject. The surface has a tactile quality; those hatched lines creating depth and shadow, like threads woven together. You can feel the pressure of the pen, the way it digs into the paper. Look at the way he uses those horizontal and vertical lines to describe the background, almost like a net, and then how he uses the same method to describe the form of the face and hair. It’s the same mark, but it does a different job, depending on where it is on the page. It reminds me a little of Picasso’s ink drawings, that same line-work economy. Like Picasso, Havrylenko reduces form to its essential components, and asks us to do the work of seeing. There’s a sense of incompleteness, of something left unsaid. It reminds us that art is always a conversation, a back and forth between the artist and the viewer.