Septemvri 1923 1925

Ivan Milev painted 'Septemvri' sometime in the 1920s using what looks like watercolor and maybe gouache on paper. You can see the artist feeling around for the forms, almost tentatively, with delicate, washy strokes, but also with these decisive darker outlines capturing two figures carrying something heavy. The way the paint bleeds and pools suggests a real openness to chance. Look at the red around the woman's skirt and the bag slung over the man's shoulder, for example. The colors are earthy, muted, like faded frescoes, but this just adds to the painting's haunting quality, like a half-remembered dream or a scene from a folk tale. It's like he's inviting us into a space of shared memory and emotion. It's hard to pin down exactly what's happening, but that's part of its power. It reminds me a little of Paula Modersohn-Becker, she also found a way to make the personal and the political intertwine. Anyway, this piece really shows that art can be a space for ambiguity and open-endedness, a place for questions rather than answers.