Untitled (Standing Figures) 1945

This is a print called 'Untitled (Standing Figures)' by Ezio Martinelli. Looking at this ethereal swarm of lines and shapes, I imagine Martinelli, poised with his etching needle, coaxing these forms into being. There's a kind of tentative energy, as if he's feeling his way through the plate, guided by intuition and the subtle resistance of the metal. The standing figures only appear, ghostlike, through this density of lines. It's not quite figuration, not quite abstraction, but something in between. I wonder what he was thinking about as he made it. Was he wrestling with the legacy of surrealism, or maybe trying to find a new way to evoke the human form? What I love about his work, like my own, is how it embraces ambiguity. It invites us to participate in the act of seeing, to bring our own associations and experiences to the table. Painters are always in conversation, you know?